


We Didn't Come Through Unscathed

by Unsentimentalf



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-09-12
Updated: 2014-05-20
Packaged: 2017-11-14 02:25:52
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 20
Words: 28,271
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/510332
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Unsentimentalf/pseuds/Unsentimentalf
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Long after Reichenbach, Sherlock is still running.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

_Stuck in traffic Haupstrasse. 6 min. Tall latte in vente mug, and a straw._

Sherlock resisted the temptation to read the text again. The words wouldn't have changed. They needed no interpretation. Someone was making their way across this Munich suburb to join him in the small Starbucks where he had set up his laptop earlier this morning. Somebody wanted him to order them a latte in a mug two sizes too big for it and a straw. Someone would be here in approximately five minutes, now.

Nobody in Munich had his phone number. He'd made no acquaintances in the week that he'd been here, and had registered with the hotel under one of his many aliases. He'd not established a routine, had never visited this particular coffee shop before.

Four minutes. He raised a hand, ordered a second espresso and the latte. He had been spied on, his number hacked. Unlikely but not impossible. The burning question was, who did they think they were about to meet? It was nearly three years since Sherlock Holmes jumped off the roof of Barts. Everyone thought- everyone knew- that he was dead. 

Three and a half minutes. Some local crimelord, or even one of the good guys, with better surveillance than he had anticipated. He had a cover story for such people, with solid documentation and unbreakable alibis. It would be interesting to meet the sender of the text, to find out how much they thought they knew and how they'd come by it.

Sherlock relaxed, a little, paid for the drinks when they arrived, arranged the most comfortable of the available chairs opposite his own. Two minutes. He went back to his open laptop and the paper he was reading on the intricaties of forging pre-War Austrian coinage. His visitor would doubtless announce himself, or herself, in the next 120 seconds or so. No need to seem too eager to discover their identity.

He lifted his head to a change in the street noise filtering into the cafe. An electric wheelchair; both doors had been opened to allow it in. Sherlock assessed the occupant automatically. Ataxia and muscle weakness, both sides, worse on the right hand side, onset long after maturity. Most likely a serious head injury. An advanced but much used keypad by the left hand and a speaker by his head suggested both difficulty in speaking clearly and access to state of the art equipment to compensate. The neatly trimmed black beard and mustache went some way to disguise the slack and unevenly drooping mouth. His eyes were hidden by large dark glasses but Sherlock knew how to read the direction of gaze from the facial tilt. This was his visitor. And, a beat later, Sherlock recognised him.

He was round the table, moving the unnecessary chair aside, before the expensive wheelchair reached the vacated space. He slid back into his seat. For once everything he could think of was as trite and obvious as anyone ordinary might say. You survived. You found me. You're damaged. So he kept silent, and merely pushed the latte over to within easy reach of the man's left hand.

Jim Moriarty reached his shaking hand up to grasp the sunglasses. He lost his grip as he tugged and they clattered down onto the table. Sherlock scooped them up, folded them, put then neatly down again. Only then did he look up into the eyes of his nemesis.

The man was laughing at his reaction. Of course. Jim had planned this meeting. Sherlock was the only one hit by a shock greater then any he'd ever known. He needed to take back the initiative.

"All that forward planning and you screwed up something as simple as blowing your brains out." His tone was derisory. 

Moriarty's lips twitched in what might have been a smile but he didn't respond.

"Do you not speak? It used to be impossible to shut you up."

"Cn... spek." The words were distorted but Sherlock could just about make them out. He imagined that they would get easier to decipher with practice.

There was damage to both gross and fine motor function. What else? Impossible to predict. There were precedents, he knew; he'd need to research them.

Logic. Jim had found Sherlock. So assume no serious damage to memory, reasoning or forward planning. Also assume that he still had access to significant funds and servants. Which raised two vital questions; what did he want? And what could he do?

Moriarty made a raw noise that Sherlock belatedly interpreted as laughter. "A last." He reached for the large half full mug, dragged it to the edge of the table and managed to maneuvre the straw towards his mouth. "Gettin... scrred." 

Jim was no threat with a gun any more. Immediate danger? "Snipers?"

One side of Moriarty's mouth and an eyebrow twitched. Sherlock thought that was probably assent. "You're certainly a lot less annoyingly chatty with half your brain missing. Are we going to play Twenty Questions for the rest of the morning, or are you just going to tell me why you're here?"

Moriarty pushed away the mug, rested his hand on the keyboard, tapping out something. The automatic movements clearly came much easier than gripping the mug or the sunglasses. He must have practiced for months- years- to get the slow typing into his limited repetitive motor skills. Sherlock took the opportunity to start a search on his laptop for medical reports on gunshot survival and damage.

Moriarty stopped typing and Sherlock looked up from his screen, anticipating an artificial voice through the speaker. Instead he got a text alert. 

_Should have photo of your face, Sherlock. Seen a ghost?_

"That took a great deal of effort, Jim. Is that all you had to say?"

The head jerked. A second message: he'd lined them up ready.

 _Why are you here? That cosy flat, all those friends of yours? John? Why aren't you at home with John, Sherlock?_

"I might have known you'd still blather somehow."

Jim tapped again, smashed a wobby fist on the send key.

_Why?_

He spoke aloud as Sherlock looked down at his phone."Whaay?"

Sherlock sighed. "You must know why." No-one would have tracked him down here and not checked up on his people in the process.

"Tell"

Something was nagging at Sherlock. Head injuries. Head injuries and laying down long term memory...

"You don't remember anything on the roof." He looked at Jim's pale face under the black beard. "You don't know what we said. You don't know why you pulled that trigger, ."

It was his turn to laugh. "That must really annoy you, I imagine." He closed his laptop, drained the coffee mug. "I'm done here." He was stalling. He needed time to think and to research before he faced Moriarty again, but most of all he needed to check up on everyone. "You know how to contact me." He walked past the wheelchair and out.


	2. Chapter 2

Either Moriarty had access to Sherlock's internet feed or his timing was brilliant. Sherlock sat in his new hotel room and checked up on his people to a steady and grueling accompaniment of texts.

John. _Another disciplinary hearing? "Arrogant and rude"; now I wonder where he gets that from?_

He ignored it.

_He only re-enlisted because he was looking for trouble. Wouldn't it be ironic if he was the one who ended up dead?_

Sherlock stabbed delete, teeth gritted. He hoped that the slow typing hurt. A couple of minutes later came the third.

_It won't be the same now Johnny's off playing soldiers again. Is that why you don't go home?_

John seemed as safe, for the moment, as roadside bombs and Taliban gunmen allowed, but Moriarty knew exactly where he was. 

Lestrade. _Moved again. The rent on that old place was rather high, wasn't it? Demotion by two ranks and not even the private security firms will touch him. They'll never let him out from behind a desk again._

Sherlock consigned the new address to memory. A long commute from a nasty new estate of tiny flats next to a railway line.

_He's not likely to forgive you for leaving him in this mess. Is that why you don't go home, Sherlock?_

Lestrade was not all right, but he was physically safe, until Jim decided otherwise.

Mrs Hudson. _Getting twice the rent and your bedroom's a nursery now; that's so sweet. She couldn't take you back in now even if she wanted to, and she doesn't, of course._

He'd known that for years. 221b was forever in the past. 

_Is that why you don't go home, Sherlock? Because you've no home left to go to?_

London was his home. Not one place, or one person. Mrs Hudson usually landed on her feet. Usually. Moriarty could change that.

Molly. _Oh, Sherlock. I'm surprised you have the nerve to even think her name. Was ever a girl so badly used?_

He'd had no choice. She'd known that he was alive; that put them both in danger.

_The funny thing is that she's still trying to hold her tongue for you. Selective mutism. She's unlikely to recover but what does that matter to you?_

It mattered. He'd thought that he was just tidying up that loose end, letting her get back to her safe, ordinary life without carrying the burden of his continued existence. He hadn't expected the carefully planted evidence of his death weeks after the fall to produce such a mental collapse.

Molly at least was relatively immune, this time. There was nothing that Jim could do to hurt her more that he had.

_Is that why you don't go home, Sherlock? You can't face the wreckage of everyone you left behind?_

In sudden anger he typed back _None of the above_ , paused for a second over send, then snapped the phone shut, message unsent. Moriarty wanted to know his thoughts. Wanted to figure from them backwards to that time on the roof. That, at least, he could deny the man, and keep the pressure here, not in London or Afghanistan or a quiet Sussex psychiatric ward. 

The phone beeped again and he flicked it open.

_No residue of concern for your devoted sibling?_

That he could respond to. No secrets there. He typed back _None._ and went back to his forged coins. Jim left him alone for the rest of the afternoon.


	3. Chapter 3

Coin fraud took place c.1907. Munich police unlikely to act.

 

Homicide Warsaw, 22yr US artist, head injuries. Section excised from newly completed painting (local politicians as crows picking over an abandoned feast). Missing section reported to depict nothing more interesting than a table leg.

Would Jim think I'm running? _Warsaw_.

4 min _Don't bother. One of mine._

?Don't bother? 

 

500ml wide flask broken by Polish Customs. Idiots much exercised about powder dessicant. 3hr+ wait for analysis. 

2 hrs Senior official proffers apologies and advises bags have been taken down to waiting car. Decline to follow. M now has my luggage (not laptop). Minor irritant.

 

Rooms taken (unadvertised) Estimate one to three days till found. Investigating case while staying under M's radar will be challenging. 

Tweet from 11m. ago. **€€€ for 5x8 for 7S. Guess who's up for lust! It will look good in the town hall!!!**  
+7 weeks **D still being a prick about his f-ing public image and 7S. Went home early.**  
+1 week **Sketch for Birds complete. D happy- says it's "safer" than 7S. Philistine!!! All that wasted paint!**

Checked Birds canvas- approx 5'x8'. Political blackmail. Case nearly solved. Trace D tomorrow; one of councillors on Birds, and his blackmailer. Back up chain, aim to expose M's local ops and get out before M catches up.

New pyjamas. Sleep impossible 

Items missing  
Full glassware  
Reagents  
Microscope  
Blank slides  
Spare laptop battery  
Printer  
Paper  
Clothes  
Nicotine patches  
Travel kettle  
Spare chargers  
Painkillers  
Shaving kit  
Pens  
Tin cocoa   
John's stethoscope

 

3.24am. The desire to talk to someone is strong again. I am not by nature solitary. He knows that. "Why don't you go home?"

I have been lying on this unfamiliar bed half the night, running my thumb across the keys of my phone. Every number that I need is in here. A text written now could be read in seconds by Lestrade, or my brother. Even John, half a world away and busy doctoring would glance down to see who had contacted him. I can imagine exactly how he would swear. Only poor Molly is locked away from instant communication, because she will not communicate at all.

I can't. I know that. The impulse, familiar from three years of nights like these, is lessened accordingly. 

The new temptation is, of course, Jim's number. Unexpected and raw and desirable. Conversation. Competition. I don't know how I feel about Jim being alive. Not that feelings have ever been relevant here. When I think of him I still imagine the slight, active figure, his words biting, his every expression deliberate and deceptive. I have to shift my thoughts, consciously, to the man in the wheelchair and the slow slurred speech. 

Is he still in Munich? Will he come here in person? I type out "Warsaw wet. Not staying long. Plse forward luggage somewhere 8+ hrs sunshine." I look at it for a few seconds. Unwise. Jim is not my friend, not a fellow traveller. Jim is the author of all our misfortunes and he intends to pen a few more for me before we are done.

I delete the text, unsent. No kettle, no cocoa, just a long night ahead.


	4. Chapter 4

Someone called me "dear" today.

The new physiotherapist. "Don't worry about that, dear. It's a perfectly natural physical reaction." As if the damaged have no choice but to respond to his youth and virility. Our bodies are no longer our own to control.

We are rich, though. Calculation in his eyes under the faux pity. "I could make you more comfortable, love. If you'd like." He'd put his hand anywhere for a big enough tip. Just his hand, though. We are grotesques, after all.

Gerber was bristling by the door. Greed long since overcame repulsion there. Two years ago I would have had him violate the young man. Today a shake of my head declines both sets of services, and the exercises continue.

I am in Warsaw because Sherlock is, no better reason to drag my unwieldy self and entourage across Europe at two hours' notice. What better reason could there be? I have disrupted his journey, stolen his luggage, driven him into hiding, and now I wait restlessly for the phone to ring. What does he make of my ridiculously overblown, ridiculously petty obsession?

He's gone to ground. Not hotels, or guest houses. Staying with a friend? No, Sherlock resurrected doesn't go within a thousand miles of anyone he cares about. Why not? Sherlock has secrets. I want them. I don't know where he is, but it doesn't matter. Tomorrow the fox will be dug out. 

Tonight I can't sleep.

_Talk to me_

I look at the words for a few seconds, gesture to erase them. Needy is not a good look for me. 

I lie on my back in the large bed, propped as usual between bolsters to keep my unruly limbs under control. No casual, unconscious, sleep-begetting sprawl for me. Another night I would have called for the sleeping tablets, but I can't afford sedation, not with him close. Instead I drift between wakefulness and shallow, unpleasant dreams until dawn.


	5. Chapter 5

Should he run?

Running will buy him time, but not a great deal of time. Jim knows where the people who matter to him are.

Running is a gamble. There is an outside chance that he might lose. (One bullet. Two. Three. Four. And nothing left to Sherlock but revenge. Is Moriarty still prepared to die to win the game? He doesn't think so but he hasn't seen enough of the incompletely resurrected man to be sure.)

If he doesn't run, Jim's people will find him (within the next three hours, he calculates). He doubts that he will be allowed to walk out again. Running gives him time to think, to find a next move, before one is forced upon him.

He runs.

###

The last stop had been a small town in the snowy mountains. The three men at the other end of the carriage had gathered up the cards they'd been playing non-stop in the five hour journey from Warsaw and had descended, arguing without heat in a language he didn't know about the distribution of the winnings.

The guard came through the train for the third time. He took no notice of Sherlock as he walked past, but when he reached the recently occupied seats he turned round.

"Your bags?" he asked brusquely in Polish. He pushed one into the aisle and Sherlock's line of sight with his foot.

Sherlock's automatic denial died on his lips as he registered the familiar black leather. He got rapidly to his feet.

"You must keep them with you," the guard chided and walked on.

All of his possessions had been removed, handled roughly then stuffed back into the bags unceremoniously. Sherlock rifled through in search of devices or messages, found nothing. Their presence here was message enough.

###

He walks the length of the short train and back again, looking for Jim's people. He finds half a dozen of them scattered between the four carriages. Some of them ignore him, others look up, sober faced or smiling. The train rattles onwards, curving through the empty hills, stops occasionally at the larger settlements. He doesn't get off. There is no point, now.

###

 

Kiev was grey and there was the feel of rain in the air. No-one offered to carry Sherlock's bags and there was no car waiting at the exit. He walked precisely one hundred yards towards the city centre, finding himself outside a cheap six bed hotel with WiFi, checked in under an alias he hadn't used for a couple of years, logged into his laptop to check up on his people (all still alive, all still oblivious to the existence of either of the men who played for their lives) and went out to find something edible.

###

The first injury that he sustains from this latest kidnapping is to the top of his tongue, burned from the cafe's oversweet coffee. The price of making them wait a few seconds while he takes a sip of the scalding liquid, just to make the point. 

Jim's hotel suite must cost at least six times as much as Sherlock's shabby room. Between the arms and shoulders of the men pinning him down onto the oversized bed he catches glimpses through the open doors into a sitting room. The door to the bathroom is closed. It appears that Moriarty is yet to arrive.

A middle-aged woman, face pinched and focused, bends over him with a cold stethoscope to his chest. The implication of her presence is not lost on Sherlock, and he is not reassured in the slightest when she goes on to measure his blood pressure. He catches only a glimpse of the vials and needles being laid out carefully in the bedside table but it is enough to start him talking to her urgently in English (her few words to the men holding him had been pure Western Australian). She seems uninterested in his deductions about her specialities but when he gets to how and why she was struck off she snaps at the men and Sherlock has a twisted pillowcase thrust between his prised open jaws. Silenced and pinioned, he can now do nothing but wait.

Right shoulder. The thick needle stabs an inch deep into solid muscle and he convulses in searing pain against the hands holding him down. The needle is withdrawn, the stethoscope returns to measure his wildly thumping heart. Enforced, unexplained, hostile medical procedures. The stuff of nightmares, happening now.

Left shoulder. The new pain drowns the old one, temporarily, then both agonies beat at his head, against his screwed up eyes. They are undoing his belt now, pulling his trousers down to his knees. Left thigh, deep and brutal. He can't pretend to himself that it's over. Jim is not asymmetric. He can't feel the stethoscope any more but it must be there, measuring. Right thigh and he screams a fourth time, noiseless against the gag. 

They hold him down until his heart beat is calmer. At what he calculates without intending to is eighty beats a minute the cuff tightens around his arm, measuring, and the hands release him. He flexes his arms, automatically, and nothing happens. Tries to move his fingers. Nothing. His body does not work any more.

The doctor moves his limbs and lets them go, taps his knees and elbows, standard reflex tests, failed. He lies on his back on the wide bed, immobile, not panicking. Not quite. They dress him properly again and the medic prepares one more injection, a slender needle this time. When the cloth comes out from his mouth the assistant wields a depressor on his scalded tongue and the last needle goes in, near the base. It numbs fast. By the time they release him, he is incapable of speech. 

Blood pressure and heart rate are now acceptable, apparently. They leave him alone. His pulse settles eventually to the familiar sixty three beats a minute. He can turn his head and wriggle his torso. He still has control of his bowels and bladder, thankfully. It is only his limbs and his speech that have left him.

After an hour or so Sherlock thinks that some feeling in his tongue may be returning. He tries moving his fingers, feels them twitch.Temporary. It's all temporary. Pointless. For the first time he starts to feel very angry. 

It is now that he hears the high whine of the wheelchair, seconds before the door opens. 

###

"Loo ah you."

Moriarty sounded amused. Sherlock didn't need a translator for that. He tipped his head up a little, straining his neck muscles to see the other man. 

"Noh quih same." Jim came around by the bed, patted Sherlock's legs clumsily. "Noh bahd. First apprihmahtn."

First approximation. No. Jim was mobile, could manipulate the world, had the power of speech. Sherlock was paralysed. Jim read his objection.

"I ha less than tha, first."

Sherlock noted the consonants that were difficult, the rare words that came out whole. How Moriarty dropped the little words, the small, unnecessary sounds. It was an effort, then, to speak out loud well enough to be understood. 

Sherlock didn't have to play this game. He could wait until the drugs wore off. As he thought it, he knew that Moriarty would be ready for that.

An awkward shake of the head, and Moriarty was typing. For a half a minute there was silence, then a smooth voice from the chair's speakers.

"Much as I'd like to keep you safe and comfortable. I'm afraid I do have to keep this scenario realistic. You're new to this, probably still a little disorientated. Let me offer you one small but crucial piece of advice about our condition. If you choose helplessness, predators will inevitably gather."

And aloud. "Ten minih."

He wheeled around, departed. 

###

Predators. 

Sherlock lies still for a few seconds, thinking. Predators. Moriarty's men let loose to show him the extent of his defencelessness. 

This makes no sense. Why would Jim go to these lengths to highlight his own weaknesses? What is Sherlock meant to take from this ridiculous demonstration other than what he already knows; that Moriarty's self inflicted physical deficits make him vulnerable to everyone around him?

He does not know. He has not time to consider. Moriarty's predators are the more immediate problem. It seems unlikely that the message is merely one of resignation to his -their- fate. Something Moriarty thinks that he can do will avoid the threatened assault.

He tries movement, finds that his limbs respond to an extent now, but they are sluggish and without power. He has a choice- fall off the bed or try to drag himself up it. Falling off doesn't seem to make him any less vulnerable, so he starts the slow, uncomfortable contortions to shift himself up against the headboard.


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Accidentally posted with the first half missing! Now complete.

Watch him on the monitor. Watch him crawl.

Better, much better than the others. They merely panicked and struggled. This time you can see that brain working as his limbs flail, calculating, adjusting, focusing. 

Like a mirror. Distorted, cracked, stained and layered in dust. A flawed mirror but the reflection is there, created out of the one man who might inhabit a ruined body as you do.

Watch, bottom lip caught between your teeth as you will him onwards, up the bed. Eight minutes. Seven. He finds a rhythm, inches forward. Six minutes. You made him a promise, and you will keep it if you must, even though it will hurt you as much as it will him.

An empty conceit. It will hurt him much more.

They will bruise him, fists to his face, hands grasping and pulling. They will do worse than bruise. You have watched them with the others. He will not be quite the same afterwards, even though the drugs will wear off and his limbs will work again. 

You are refining your mirror stage by stage. 

You decide, at somewhere between four and three minutes to go, that it might be less than desirable to see your reflection clearly after all.

###

Three minutes. Approximately. I finish pulling my awkward, heavy body up against the headboard. 

What power do I have over the men- doubtless male, doubtless plural- who will come through that door? The voice in my head whispers "none". Ignore it.

I have done what I can to look less like a victim. Head raised to approximately eye level. Limbs collected and straightened, as much as I can. I have wiped my mouth on the pillow, removing the slight trace of dribble. 

Make eye contact. Keep eye contact. Speak. 

Two minutes, and I discover a strong reluctance to rehearse aloud. I feel Moriarty watching, listening. Foolish reticence. I need to know if I will be understood.

I speak into the silence. "I am Sherlock Holmes, consulting detective" and listen to the sounds emitting from around my numbed and inflexible tongue. "I a erkok omes, cosltin etetive"

Try it again. And again. And again. A little closer. I will need to keep my sentences short and slow. No constant stream of deduction to keep my opponents off balance. Frustrating. Frustration is unhelpful. One minute.

Moriarty's predators may at least come bearing answers along with teeth and claws. Jim's purpose is still utterly obscure. I tell myself that a source of information is coming through that door in thirty seconds, or less. It doesn't help much.

  

Left. American. Fingers curled into loose fists. Right. Dutchman. Flushed neck. I glance downwards. Flushed there, too. Waiting to be unleashed, both known quantities already from the train and the injections.

The leader is also puzzling familiar. After a brief second I have him. I’ve seen enough video footage, after all. Late thirties. Extensive plastic surgery- nose, slant of eyes, repositioning of eyebrows, but he was too careless or ignorant to change the way he moves. Creases in that expensive black suit from the plane flight. Thank you, Jim. I now have something to say.

“Aul Gerbe.”

The name comes out clear enough for him to understand, because he blinks, disconcerted, and his cold smile freezes.

I repeat it, more carefully. “Paul Gerber.” This time the American next to him attempts to hide his surprise. He knows the name.

Gerber was a celebrity, of sorts. A retailer who made his fortune buying and breaking up major UK high street stores, he owned football clubs and a couple of tabloids, dabbled in politics, dated models and threw lavish parties to which Cabinet and Opposition members were both frequent guests. His private jet had crashed in the Alps a few months after the Fall, and his empire was subsequently discovered to have been funded by a combination of phenomenal debt overdue for repayment and some impressive tax smoke and mirrors. Once the companies were liquidated and the manors and yachts repossessed there was nothing left for the wives, girlfriends, boyfriends, debtors and bankrupted business partners to squabble over. 

I am not at all surprised by his continued existence, nor by his connection to Jim Moriarty. But why his presence in this room, right now? 

“Shut up.” Oh, there is a great deal of anger in that voice. Gerber has a history of temper. Rivals who cross him have sudden changes of plan or heart attacks. Those pretty young women and men that he surrounds himself with walk into doors or off yacht decks. Nothing sticks, ever.

Thank you, Jim, again.

Gazelles don’t annoy lions. Stoats don’t hate rabbits. I don’t yet know how to deal with this man as my enemy when my limbs feel like rubber and I can hardly be understood, but it’s got to be better odds than staying a gazelle in a room full of very big pussycats.

“Moriari’s bitch.” All the derision I can summon goes into the slurred words. 

Bulls-eye. No time to congratulate myself because his fist is coming towards my face and I can’t raise my hands to block it, can only jerk my head around so the impact is not full frontal. Unfortunately his other fist then hits me square on the nose. Several more blows, nothing now but the crashing pain and the taste of my own blood and the conviction that Jim would interfere any…second…now… 

###

You nearly don’t do anything at all.

It is just perfect. Only Sherlock could grasp in those short seconds what you have made of Gerber. Only Sherlock could summarise everything in two words, and would have the nerve to do so while paralysed and without allies.

And Gerber; well, look at him go! The former suave playboy will beat the man on the bed to death with his bare fists without once pausing to consider the consequences. A thing of beauty, created in barely two short years.

Sherlock’s face is near unrecognisable now, blood oozing from cuts and gushing from his nose. He has managed to manoeuvre his arms up but Gerber smashes past the weak barriers contemptuously. You feel as proud as Adam watching his first and second born at play.

You decide, reluctantly, that it had better stop.


	7. Chapter 7

Lying on the dirty floor of his hotel room, having been dumped back there after a cursory check by Moriarty's pet medic, Sherlock begins to explore the disturbing but increasingly plausible theory that a piece of metal tearing through a vulnerable human cerebral cortex has caused damage to more areas of an exceptional brain than merely the localised motor and speech areas

He considers that the traumatic damage may have altered motivations, changed emotions, created different and illogical patterns of thought. That the man might not be playing the deep game over the last few days that Sherlock has been struggling to understand. In short, that Jim Moriarty might simply have lost his grip on reality.

Sherlock does not find this hypothesis comforting. Moriarty has his finger on the trigger of a gun pointed at everyone that matters. He has massive resources and competent henchmen and he repeatedly finds Sherlock and takes control of his telecommunications with contemptuous ease. If Jim is no longer compos mentis (and could he ever really have be described that way?) he is that rarity, a truly dangerous madman.

By the time the muscle relaxants wear off enough to allow Sherlock crawl onto his bed and sleep off the physical, chemical and psychological beating that he's just gone through, he has reached an even more unsettling conclusion. He needs to know for certain who and what he is dealing with. He needs to talk again to Jim Moriarty and he needs to do it bruised and battered face to face.

###

Jim licks Sherlock's dried blood off Gerber's knuckles. It tastes like anyone else's blood. Tastes of very little, to be honest. Still, he knows. 

That was a spectacularly entertaining piece of theatre, but he suspects that Sherlock may have just done a particularly clever Sherlock thing, and this makes him a little edgy, a little less inclined to tolerate Gerber's demands and excuses. The man is now insisting that Sherlock must die. Insisting, to him, after failing to carry out his clear and unambiguous instructions!

The use, the sole point of Gerber, is to be tied to his side, incapable of surviving without the anonymity that only he can provide. Gerber is a minor project, started during that brief but terrible period when he'd thought himself the sole survivor of the rooftop, utterly alone in the world. It had diverted Jim a little to slowly strip away the veneer of power and privilege and civilisation, to make the man over into nothing but a violent, mindless henchman. But Gerber will start to think for himself again in the face of the threat of discovery. Soon he will realise the obvious; if he's to be safe, not just Sherlock but everyone who heard him speak must be killed, and everyone that they might have told already, and so on. 

Jim contemplates the potential bloodbath among his ranks for a moment. No. He hasn't the time or attention for the acquisition of a new entourage. Gerber had just become a disposable resource and Jim brushes his lips fondly across the bruised knuckles, starts thinking about how best to use his imminent death creatively.

It's about Sherlock, of course. It's all about Sherlock. Too much to expect that he has taken the point, the many points, when Jim recalls how many tiresome explanations had been needed in the past. He must have grasped something on his own- he has not, after all, gone back to London -but it is not enough, not yet. 

Jim had prepared a short homily to deliver at Sherlock's bedside, afterwards, on what the world is like after a Fall. He'd even taken the precaution of recording a slightly different version on a similar theme, for use should Sherlock have somehow managed to escape assault. Yet Sherlock has been delivered back to his hotel unconfronted and unlectured, bloodied but essentially undefeated, having no doubt failed to understand the purpose of the exercise entirely. 

Jim briefly considers the hostages but right now London and his old life is the last place to which he wants to draw Sherlock's attention. 

What now? Sherlock is asleep. In due course he will wake, clean the blood off his face and clothes, find and remove the hidden cameras from his room and then do... what, exactly? Run, again? Go to ground? Go on the offensive? How infuriating not to know.

"Kill him."

For a second Jim is startled that the corpse in front of him still speaks. Gerber has lethal momentum; what direction to point him in?

"O cause" he soothes, flicks his eyes back to the monitor. The sight of Sherlock unconscious and sprawled out on top of the quilt as if he had no defences at all makes him itch. Let him sleep. Jim will not take advantage, not this time, not when what he wants (even above the imposition of his own will) is Sherlock's comprehension. "Soohn."


	8. Chapter 8

Past oblivious concierge. Jaw and cheek throb sharp under make-up. Ping. 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11,12. Ping.

Rap.

Pause.

Rap.

###

Aren't we being polite this morning? Knocking; how very non confrontational. 

I wait. 

He doesn't knock again. The handle turns, slowly, the door is pushed open and there he is. Poor damaged darling, dressed as sharp as he knows how and, look, what's back! The scarf? Oh, really, Sherlock! Just for me? Checking the room with a quick glance. Nobody here but us chickens.

His eyes come back to meet mine. "May I come in?"

Priceless. Of course you may. You, always. He steps inside, closes the door, locks it behind him. There is a key in the other door that leads to the rest of the suite; he paces over, slow, waiting to see if I object. When I don't he tries the door, turns the key, walks back again. 

It is a mere signifier, this locking of my people out. A statement that he does not want to deal with Gerber, with the men who dragged him here, with the medic who drugged him. He will negotiate only with me. A small flattery, maybe, but I like small flatteries, from him.

Will he sit down? No. He keeps his meaningless advantage, his tall height looming over my chair. His deep voice is cool and yet insistent.

"Explain."

###

One word gives nothing away. Not the fast heart rate, not the muscles tensing, nothing of the adrenaline surge, the throbbing pain in my head, the shiver across my skin. (The transport remembers. It doesn't want to be here.)

Irrelevant. This is necessary. Hearing his answer... is necessary. 

Crooked smile. He tips his head slightly sideways in a faint echo of the old, familiar gesture, then back against the padded rest to look up at me. 

"Sher lock.". The slur makes his voice sound drunkenly fond. "Alwai one stehp beind.". He pauses.

"You fell.". The two words are perfectly clear. The look from under drooping eyelids searches for my comprehension but there is nothing yet to comprehend.

His exasperated sigh is pure pantomime. I should be able to read his emotions, but all that I'm aware of right now are mine, and unhelpful.

My turn to speak, apparently. "I faked falling."

A snort at that. "Hand".

I look down at his right hand, resting palm up on the arm of his chair. The nails are perfectly manicured. The fingers are crookedly bent. I know what he wants, but as always I don't know why.

"Should I cross it with silver?"

He lets me see that he is unimpressed by my attempts at delay. "Hand."

Reluctantly I place my own, palm up, on his. His hand is warm. I have to slow my breathing. What his people did to me, and what they nearly did to me, has shaken me more than I would have expected, and yet here I am again. 

He wraps his fingers around mine, awkward and twitching but definite in intent. What does he see in my palm that fascinates him so?

Of course. The faint mark where the piece of gravel embedded itself deep, when I hit the ground. He looks back up at me. "You fell". He does not let go.

"Physically, a short distance. It was necessary."

He laughs at that. "Physikly. Oh, Shehlock. Wha otheh way s theh?"

I close my eyes in exasperation, open them again rapidly before I miss anything. He's still holding onto my hand. 

"This "fall" that you threatened me with was metaphorical. The rooftop was my idea, not yours."

He watches me with those huge brown eyes, his hand tightening around mine. "No."

I don't know which part of my statement he is arguing with. I don't know what he wants, or if he even has any lucid desires. I can't interpret this new nonfluent Moriarty and yet I have no option but to try.

"So I fell. What does that have to do with yesterday's performance?"

His smile widens. That was the question he was waiting for. 

"Yu thin yu suvied. That we boh suvied. Bu we havt stopt falln yeht."

###

Oh yes, Sherlock hates that answer. He's always been hopeless at allegory, flounders at any motive beyond the banal. The first- no, the second time we met he came strutting into the swimming pool brandishing the Partington plans, because he was so sure that it had to be about the usual things -money, power, information. 

He didn't get it then, he didn't get it later and he doesn't get it now. Feed him a motive, however implausible, and he'll grasp at it, as he did the stupid keycode, because the patterns that I play with are beyond his comprehension. I wonder sometimes what he'd be like if he understood me. Too dangerous to allow to live. Since my discovery that the experience of thinking that I'd outlived him was disturbing, his survival is a little higher on my list of priorities than it used to be.

Now he frowns at me, irritated by his own bafflement. "Talk some sense. What were you trying to achieve by paralysing me?"

Poor Sherlock. It galls him so badly to be reduced to asking instead of deducing, and with no leverage to get an answer at that. I'll answer his question, eventually, because it's reaching that time when he should know, but can I really be blamed for playing with him a little longer?

###

To confuse the metaphorical and the actual might be a symptom of psychosis. I have yet to detect any definite indicators of sanity, any comprehensible motive. I give him another opportunity, a clearer question, and he hesitates, glances down to where his fingers grip mine. 

"'M sorhy no I kilhd you. R, r lov ws sothin fine. Untih..ih theh coh to geh me." He pauses, takes a deep breath. "I will ho yo hah in mine."

It is by far the longest speech he's made, and I can see the effort it costs him. It also makes no sense whatsoever.

"Until who come to get you?"

He laughs, again. "Sohn, pet. Philshtine."

Song? I pull out my phone, awkwardly left-handed, type in the most comprehensible of the words and add 'lyrics" . It is a song, by some American doggerel writer called Tom Lehrer. The lyrics are a particularly clumsy and inappropriate attempt at black humour and add another mental tick in the "probably deranged" box.

He's not answering my question. There may be no rational answer. I ought to start working on getting out of here in one piece.

"May I have my fingers back?"

A quick smile. "No. I lihk thi."

I could rip then from his weak grip easily, but I am reluctant to do anything that might be the spark for a repeat of yesterday's hyperviolence. 

"Then what now?"

###

I wonder what he thinks he's doing here?

I should have wondered before, when he arrived, but I wanted to see him and there he was, in beautiful, brutalised person, asking all the questions I wanted him to ask, and I was careless. Was it such an oversight that left me with a bullet through my skull, bleeding out over a dingy concrete roof while Sherlock took his very dramatic, very non lethal fall? The meanie won't tell me. Not yet.

Sherlock has a talent for survival that goes past the merely mundane. Half the time he does nothing but play it by ear, albeit spectacularly well, but then he comes up with something like that nosedive, beautifully choreographed, meticulously planned. Is this visit one of those? If so I could be in actual, interesting danger. 

I don't think so. I know his pathetically limited resources, I monitor his communications. I watch. He had done nothing since Gerber made him so interestingly pretty for me but sleep, wake, shower, dress, cover the worst of the damage with expertly applied makeup and return here.  
So why did he come? Why does he think he came? He doesn't threaten, he doesn't bargain. He doesn't surrender, not quite. He stands there, slightly hunched over, pulse significantly elevated, ridiculously pretending to be pinned to the arm of my chair, and he says that he wants to know what I think will happen next. 

This is not like Sherlock. Sherlock argues. Sherlock states. Sherlock deduces, arrogant and loud. He tells me what I think, what will happen next, and occasionally he's even right, which is why he's worth bothering with at all. 

Sherlock always deduces, more automatic than the breathing he's having to consciously steady right now. (If I'd known earlier what effect just holding his hand would have...) He's doing it now. He's just not telling me his conclusions, and that's no fun at all.

Oh, Sherlock, my petal, my sweet. You never really expected me to spill my plans on request like some clumsy Bond villain. So what are you after with these unsettlingly direct questions about what I'm thinking? I'm honestly stumped. 

Maybe I'll answer this one, though. Just to feel your pulse jump under my thumb.

###

"Now? M goinh t persde you t tak you cloes off."

I blink, pause, check that I've interpreted correctly. 

"Why?"

He shakes his head slightly, amusement, I think. "Usl reasn."

"Not usual for me. No." I make the statement as cold and final as I can. Serious brain trauma produces all manner of personality changes. I just hadn't anticipated this one. Rethink. Fast.

He turns, awkwardly, his other hand palm up. "Swp".

Apparently he thinks seducing me will take more than broken sentences. The fluency of his keypad will get him nowhere but I can learn more from loquacity than from more of this halting delivery. With a brief protest of "this is absurd!" I place my left hand on his, feeling the grip close with a force mostly imagined, and retrieve use of the right, resisting the unnecessary and too revealing urge to wipe it clean of his sweat. 

A small screen unfolds from the back of the chair and moves with the quiet whirr of expensive motors to a position just in front of his right shoulder, words already scrolling as he types. So he doesn't entrust this mission to the emotionless electronic voice and certainly not to the impersonal intrusion of texts. It is easy to watch both the screen and his face and I have no doubt that that is deliberate. Since this bizarre proposal was raised I have, ironically, detected much more rationality to his actions.

_Don't you think we've flirted long enough, my dear? Think what an epic affair we have going here. Not even two separate graves could part us._

"Did you have a grave? I wasn't aware that anyone had bothered to dig you one." He's easier to snipe at (not flirt with) when he sounds like Jim Moriarty again. 

_Technically, no. But I was declared legally dead in several jurisdictions. I believe your brother circulated a paper."_

"Not the first time that Mycroft's been wrong. A civil service memo hardly counts for much as an epitaph."

He huffs, stretches out his fingers. He must endure cramps to type fast with the twisted digits, but he returns to it gamely.

_Of course I didn't need an arrogantly overstated marble headstone for my friends to sob brokenheartedly over. Did you know that he still sends asphodels weekly?_

I hadn't known. I key the flower name in as he knows I will. 'My regrets follow you to the grave.' Superstitious propitiations to an empty piece of earth. Apparently Mycroft's guilt supersedes rational thought. Idiot.

_One grave and a memo. It's still transcendent. You and me, baby, falling together into death. What could be sexier?_

Onto the offensive. Get this stopped now. My hand tugs away easily from his limp grasp.

"This is disappointing. I thought there was a bit more quality to your obsession, but you're just another member of my fan club. 'Oooh Sherlock, you've changed my life. Ooh, Sherlock, I just know that we're soulmates. Ooh, Sherlock, I want to have your babies. I want to murder everyone who looks at you. I'm really special, not like the others. I understand you like no-one else does. I'll make you happy forever. I'll kill myself if you don't reply.' Unbelievably boring, the lot of you."

I arch an eyebrow. "And as for transcendent? I imagine you think that's profound. So did the writers of the four emails, two tweets and one letter in lurid pink ink who used it before you. Credit where it's due, though; you are the first one who managed to spell it correctly."

###

Ouch. 

It's at times like this that I miss the purely physical responses. How satisfying it would be to slap him, hard, on top of those fresh bruises, to scream in his face as I do it. 

I am not comparable in any way to his stupid fans. I am Jim Moriarty, I am his nemesis, his downfall, his only equal and better than equal, because I won (one still unexplained bullet aside). I scare him and I fascinate him and if I want to see him naked and gasping my name then that's what I'm going to get. And if he ever calls me a...a groupie again that gasp might just be the last thing he ever gets to say. 

I smile and type.

###

The operation of the adrenal system is remarkable. Somewhat illogically given the circumstances I am no longer afraid. 

Jim, on the other hand, is furious. It only shows for a second but it's trivial to spot; his eyes have widened, his breathing is faster, his fingers twitch as they are compressed into weak fists. The screen stays blank but I can read his thoughts from his face. How dare I call him ordinary, boring, dull and worst of all unoriginal? 

Angry too because he has made a mistake. Nothing appears more pathetic than the one-way flirt and he left me the opportunity to pull out of the dance first. He's going to want to regain his credibility fast. 

He smiles and types.

_Hiiiiii! Jim from IT here!!!! I gave you my number!!!! Straight into your blind spot every time, lover boy._

Do I have a blind spot? Jim from IT got past me once, admittedly. Irene nearly did. I'm not taking his word for it.

"You were faking it back then. Now you're genuinely, stupidly sentimental."

_I never fake, pet. If you'd called that number I would have jumped into bed with you in a heartbeat. We could have had such fun!_

A brief mental picture of a naked Moriarty bouncing on my bed; I grimace. 

"I doubt it. Sex is tedious."

_Speaks the virgin._

"I don't need to waste my time trying it to know it's boring."

_Ah, that precious time that you spend doing what exactly?_

He has me there. I've found nothing worthwhile to occupy myself for months now. Still.

"It's not diversion for my body that I need. It's for my brain."

_Oh, your body._. He makes a point of looking at it, unimpressed _Pretty enough but I could buy better on the streets of any city in Europe, together with someone who knows how to use it. Your brain's what I want to see naked, sweet. The bit with the huuuuggggeeee blind spot about sex._

He has regained his equilibrium, switched from flirting to persuasion. He sounds as sane as I've ever known him despite his professed intention. Not necessarily relevant. Typing and his poor motor control dilute his crazier mannerisms. I have to probe further.

"You're too smart to waste your time on this, or at least you used to be. Cingulate cortex damage or temporal?"

He shakes his head. _Stupid, stupid STUPID! Sherlock and always blind! Celibacy isn't a function of intelligence, idiot! Remember Adler? You've always been obsessed with keeping control in front of the normals- I get that. What's at stake here couldn't be more different._

His hand had cramped again. I watch him try to stretch it. When Jim Moriarty tells me I'm being stupid it is worth at least considering the possibility that he is right.

I consider the possibility. It leads me straight down a path that I don't want to take. What might sleeping with Jim gain me? I wonder if he's going to give me a choice. He catches my near imperceptable glance at the inner door and his eyes open wide in mock horror. 

_Not going to rape you, love! What would be the fun in that?_

"Apparently it was fun yesterday." He'd had me drugged into paralysis and sent men in with, I was certain, instructions to do just that.

He waves a wobbly arm, unconcerned. _Knew you'd get out of it._

Why am I even considering this? Because Jim has me cornered, every way I turn. He's demonstrated adequately over the last few days that I can't run and I can't protect anyone. He isn't going to simply leave me alone and his behaviour verges on the deranged. Breaking this impasse will take something spectacular, and maybe taking my clothes off is the first step.

###

He's considering it. 

Thinking it through, opportunities and dangers, concessions and advantages. Whizz go the cogs and the machine decides. Not so much as a flicker of desire, which is distinctly insulting, but I can work on that. 

"Ground rules."

_If you like._ His glance tells me that he knows I won't keep to them, but still he goes ahead.

"None of your minions come anywhere near me."

I have no intention of sharing him around. I nod.

"I'm free to come and go as I choose." He licks his lips briefly. "And my people are left entirely alone."

_Is that all?_

"Yes."

_Fine. Agreed. Now my rules. You don't walk out on me halfway through, sweet. You stay till we're done. Then you can go, if you want._

He nods, a little too readily. He can't know that little about what might happen here, surely? "What else?"

_No lying back and thinking of England._

He laughs. 'Not England. When this becomes tedious I've got plenty of other things to think about."

He's an innocent. He doesn't yet understand. I nod again. 

At least he hasn't asked me what I'm physically capable of. Sherlock knows that's not the issue. 

_Now?_

"Some decent coffee first." 

A little bravado. Gorgeous boy. I can hardly wait to get my hands on those bruises, but I nod and order coffee. No rush. No rush at all. 

 

 

[Lyrics](http://www.metrolyrics.com/i-hold-your-hand-in-mine-lyrics-tom-lehrer.html)


	9. Chapter 9

The unpleasant odour of the hotel's 'luxury shower gel' makes Sherlock wrinkle his noise slightly. There is an expensive dark green glass bottle in the cubicle whose contents smell rich, smooth and familiar but he suspects that when this is over too much of the scent of Jim Moriarty will linger on his skin. He does not choose to start that way.

He runs his fingertips across the bruises as the make-up sloughs away. His face must look more damaged than it feels, and it feels sore enough that his prods are tentative.

Defining a person by respect to what they haven't done is stupid. Sherlock has never had any strong desire to have sex. He still doesn't feel any desire, but it seems like the most promising of his limited options right now. That's all it is. Nothing life-changing. Nothing important. Nothing to warrant a ridiculously overwrought phrase like "losing one's virginity". He rinses off the cheap soap, runs his hands through his wet curls and reaches for the thick towel. 

Coffee is being delivered outside the bathroom door. Hotel staff, not Jim's people and good coffee, better than their toiletries. Sherlock dries himself, checks in the mirror (the colour of the bruises is intensifying, red and brown, the puffy ring around his left eye darkening to purple) and opens the door. His clothes still lie in a heap on the bathroom floor where he dropped them.

The girl setting out the mugs jumps and giggles, hand over her mouth, then flees. Jim is laughing at him.

_Exhibitionist. You'll have to pour now._

Sherlock inspects the coffee, judges it ready. He pours for himself, and the outsized mug with a straw for Jim, who appears to be falling asleep. Sherlock sits back in the armchair by the bed and sips his. The sharp aroma of Arabica coffee floods his senses and he feels himself relax. He thinks briefly of John, who would be apoplectic right now. 

"Your move. If you have one."

_No rush. Admiring view._

"With your eyes closed."

_Seen it all before, pet._ Jim types without opening them. 

No doubt. Moriarty is a master of hidden cameras. In that case there is no reason to tolerate discomfort. Sherlock stands up again, unhooks the deep orange and black dressing gown from the door and wraps himself up in the soft towelling, then curls back up in the armchair, his feet tucked under him. 

"Let me know when you think of something to do next."

Jim's eyes flicker open again. "Goh plans. Doh worrh." 

"Not worried in the slightest." Did that sound defensive? A little. Damn. Sherlock drains the mug, pours himself a second. "Do you indulge in this sort of thing regularly?" 

"Cohee?"

"You know what I mean."

Moriarty snorts. "Thih sor o thin." 

"Sex. With other people."

" Is thah wha you thinh thi i ?"

"That's the impression you gave." Jim is trying to throw him, that's all. "Feel free to correct me if I've been misled." 

"Doh thin so. Noh yeh. "

The hum of the wheelchair is suddenly loud as Jim brings it around to the right of Sherlock's chair, the coffee still in its holder. 

"Tah my han"

Sherlock puts down his mug, reaches over to slide his fingers under Jim's slightly puffy ones. 

"Fahs. "

He brings the hand up to stroke his own face, fingers scraping lightly across the bruises. 

"Nihs." Moriarty crooks his fingers, digs into the tender skin just a touch. Sherlock moves the hand firmly a couple of inches away, drops it. 

"I am not a masochist. You should know that by now."

_No?_ He is typing again. _And yet you deny yourself the only thing you really want? What other reason is there?_

Fear and calculation. Sherlock doesn't intend to discuss either of those with Moriarty. "You're fishing for those missing memories of yours. Not a chance. And I am not going to assist you in causing me pain, so if those are your plans, rewrite them." 

Jim is watching him under lowered eyelids. The screen had rotated to face him. _You really think you get to pick and choose? You'll do everything that I want, in the end. Everything._

Sherlock ignores the goose pimples skittering across his skin. "Is that all that yesterday was about? Showing that you can throw your minions' weight around? I must stop overestimating you, Moriarty. Since your brain got shot to pieces you're nothing but a petty crimelord with more money than most." 

Teeth gleam in a crooked smile, _If you thought that you'd still have your clothes on, sweet. I don't need to coerce you. I just need to make you admit that you want it._

"That's going to be difficult," Sherlock comments," since I don't. Could we please get on? The only thing more boring than sex is talking about it." 

A sniff, and a slurp through the straw. _Help me out of these clothes and onto the bed._

Sherlock stands up, unbuttons the fine woollen jacket then the black silk shirt, peels them off Jim's arms. His upper body is pearl white and running to flabby; a physiotherapy regime not quite enough to counter the effects of his enforced sedentary lifestyle. 

"You should swim more. You'll end up with heart problems and diabetes at this rate."

Jim snorts, mock horror, "Oh no! Theh I migh die!" 

The conversation on the roof is never far from Sherlock's thoughts. "You've no intention of living that long." 

"Dohs ih realh seem lihly to you? 

He kneels to untie shoelaces. "Prison hospital services should keep you going for a few decades, like it or not." 

Jim's only reason is an unimpressed snort. Fair enough. Sherlock doesn't really think that prison will hold the man either. 

Taking off the socks is reminiscent of stripping a corpse except that he's never felt this reluctance about touching dead skin. It will be more practical to do the trousers out of the chair; he slides one arm under Jim's knees and the other around his bare back, tucks his hand under the armpit. Jim reaches up to wrap weak arms around his neck as he lifts the substantial deadweight and swings it over to the bed, their faces almost touching before he drops Moriarty the last six inches or so onto the white quilt covering the solid mattress. 

"Oooff!" Jim bounces, limbs sprawled face up on the bed. "Genhly ! No mascis eithe, peh!" 

"After yesterday you expect kid gloves? " Sherlock is slightly distracted by the rigid bulge under the flies that he is unbuttoning. It is the first real evidence that Moriarty's interest in his body is at least in part genuinely sexual. 

Trousers slide down and off. Just the silk black boxer shorts, distended upwards with a dark patch of moisture off centre. Sherlock looks back up to catch Jim's whispered suggestion. For a second he contemplates refusal but this is bound to end up pornographic soon enough. Set up no easy targets, like dignity, for the man to destroy. 

He bends over, close to Jim's stomach, catching an unwanted whiff of sweat and semen, grips the waistband of the shorts firmly between his front teeth and pulls outwards and over the fleshy obstacle. Jim's erection springs free and hits him surprisingly hard on his bruised cheek. Sherlock thinks wistfully of clean celibacy as he drags the boxer shorts all the way down smooth shaved legs with his teeth. Surely no-one really does this sort of thing for pleasure? 

###


	10. Chapter 10

It had started, as the bigger things tended to, as an interruption.

Mycroft was drafting a briefing for the Home Secretary on the British use of information from PRISM, a matter that required extremely careful futureproofing given that the revelations about the system had not yet ceased. He had briefly sketched out an assassination plan on the back of a payslip before deciding that managing the fall out with both the US and China would exceed the work involved in finishing this report.

His aide knocked and entered. She looked calm as always but Mycroft detected some concern exceeding just that which might be a result of interrupting him. “Yes.”

“We have a secure call from our embassy in Kiev. A man, thought to be of Dutch origin, is seeking ‘protection’, apparently from both the Ukrainian authorities and his own criminal associates, in exchange for information about a man wanted in Britain.”

Mycroft raised a hand. “Rescind whatever the embassy staff have told him and hand the whole thing over to the local police. We don’t harbour other countries’ criminals- you know that.” He was sharp; he had not slept well for the previous few nights, his doctor had unhelpfully provided only an entirely unnecessary lecture on benzodiazepine dependency and he was aware that he was treading a dangerously fine line in the paragraph that had just been interrupted.

“Sir.” The word dropped into the silence. “I think perhaps you should hear this one out.”

He waited, index finger tapping.

“He claims to be able to give us Paul Gerber.”

 

The military airport twenty miles from Kiev was running a skeleton staff, and the Ukrainian military were conspicuously absent. As Mycroft walked through the unmanned customs post his aide was giving him details of the final deal.

“Maximum 21 armed personnel. No incendiaries. Absolutely no air support. To stay for no more than 4 hours without further authorisation, and to notify immediately on leaving the country. A full report on conclusion of the action. No action against any member of local authorities of any kind. Full reparations for any damage. If we draw any media or public attention, or any firearm is discharged in public, or any Ukrainian citizen is killed or injured then Kiev will expect a full explanation at head of government level.”

Mycroft had a particularly fruitful relationship with his opposite number in Kiev, and it was yielding dividends. He could think of few countries which would have authorised an armed incursion on the streets of their capitals for whatever reason. He would do his best to keep within their terms, not least because he did not like the current Prime Minister and had as little to do with him as possible. Briefing him to explain matters to the Ukrainian president after a messy operation would be tiresome.

A second, larger, plane was landing as Mycroft waited in the deserted canteen. Within five minutes a large group of men and women were collected in the main concourse. Their leader crossed to speak to Mycroft.

“Major Dumas.” Mycroft inspected the man’s cheap white t-shirt. It had “15 Days of Freedom Left!” emblazoned across it in black. “A local campaign?” Was local politics wise?

Tom Dumas smiled. “Eighteen British lads descend on Kiev. Don’t know the language, don’t know the culture, wouldn’t know a museum if one landed on top of them. Only one good explanation.” He turned round. On the back, in bright green “Make It Last!” with a crude picture of a beer glass.

“Ah. Yes, that will do nicely. And the ladies?”

“The three girls are interrailing. Met up with us on the train from the airport and thought they’d come out drinking.”

Mycroft nodded. Dumas was one of the most experienced special forces operatives they had. It was fortunate that his team had been back in the UK and available at short notice. Talking of which,

“And your additional member?”

“Flying in from Germany. His plane should land in the next ten minutes.” Dumas’s voice had gone flat and disapproving. Mycroft had anticipated the reaction but it was still disappointing.

“Problem, Major?”

“Yes.” 

“Would you like to tell me what it is?”

Dumas stood straighter, the jeans and T-shirt incongruous on the military frame. Mycroft knew that he could shed that instantly, but right now he chose not to. “Lieutenant Watson comes here straight from disciplinary detail.”

“Yes.” He’d known that, of course. Unlike John’s superiors, he even knew what had been said to the man to make him snap. Again.

“I don’t need a newcomer in the squad, I don’t need another medic and I certainly don’t need a man with his service record.”

Mycroft nodded. He had a certain amount of sympathy with Dumas over this one. “However in my judgement we do need John Watson along on this one.”

“Mind telling me why?”

He shook his head. He wasn’t entirely sure himself. Not firm lines, these ones, definite connections, but a spider web. He was sick of spiders.

“You might keep him with you,” Dumas suggested hopefully.

“Not possible.” He wasn’t sure that John would integrate well with the special forces unit but he was absolutely certain that Watson wouldn’t work with him. “I suggest that you give him the opportunity to prove himself. He’s a deeply moral man who’s been put through more than you and I can imagine.”

“It’s men like that,” Dumas said coldly, “who need to get out of the army. For their sake and everyone else’s. He can tag along and deal with the grazed knees but he’s not getting issued with a firearm, not while he’s officially on discipline.” 

Mycroft judged that was the most he was going to get.

 

The next briefing took place in a small flat two streets from the embassy. Things were moving faster than Mycroft would have liked, but Kiev had given him deadlines and the unnamed Dutchman still in the embassy building was insistent that his life was in imminent danger.

“Nothing.” Dumas said. “No sign of any action focussed on or around the building. No-one can get closer than thirty yards with anything larger than a pistol or small incendiary.”

Mycroft nodded. “What about something like rocket launchers?”

“Not much we can do to stop that. We don’t have the forces or the local authorisation to do a house to house search of the area. Satellite photos might pick launchers up, but it’s easy enough to disguise in a city setting. Is that the sort of action we’re looking at here?”

“It’s possible.” Mycroft glanced round at the others in the room. Sandra Kenns, the senior British security operative in Ukraine, two of Dumas’s interrogators, his own aide. And, arms folded, eyes unwaveringly fixed on his face, a silent John Watson standing at the back.

“Paul Gerber, as many of you will remember, was supposedly killed in a plane crash two years ago, leaving debts large enough to destabilise two banks and lead to the collapse of a major UK high street presence. We had suspicions that he had faked suicide but nothing concrete materialised.”

He paused. The next bit had until now been known only to himself. It was the reason that they were all here. It could also destroy him. For a long few seconds he felt the desire to tell them all to go home, let the informant take his chances. He took a deep breath, went on.

“Forensic examination of Gerber’s businesses suggested, and it was no more than a suggestion, that large as they were, they might possibly have been acting as a conduit for transferring funds in and out of a much larger and previously undetected criminal business network.”

John shifted. His voice was low. “Jim Moriarty.”

Mycroft smiled at him, got no response. “Jim Moriarty, indeed.”

Flickers of dissent around the room. Sandra spoke up for them all.

“Jim Moriarty’s a fiction. That psychopath detective made him up.”

A quick worried glance from his aide, the only one there apart from Watson who knew what Sherlock had been to him. 

John spoke up. “Moriarty was real enough. He killed Sherlock Holmes. But he’s dead. “

Mycroft wondered how John could be sure. He was certain. “John’s right. Jim Moriarty did exist, and is dead. We have video footage of him committing suicide. But his criminal empire is not entirely defunct. I have evidence that major parts of it are still functioning. If Gerber is alive then he is a possible candidate to head it. Abandoning his previous activities to move up the ladder fits with his psychological profile.”

No-one in the room wanted to catch his eye, apart from Watson who would seemingly outstare him forever. They were not buying it, not even from him. Identifying the network as Moriarty’s had been a mistake. Fairy tales, graven deep in the nation’s psyche. Mad Sherlock and his imaginary supervillain. Comic book stuff.

They were both dead. It didn’t matter now what anyone thought. All that mattered to Mycroft was that the final wisps of Moriarty’s spiderweb were swept away for good. His self-appointed task, his penance. For that he needed Gerber, alive or dead.

“We are going to go to the embassy and rapidly establish the quality of the information this man has to offer. I have the authority to offer him asylum if that is required. Our arrival is likely to be noted by any hostiles so I want all of us out of the embassy within 60 minutes maximum . As soon as we obtain information that allows a move to take Gerber that is to be undertaken without delay, staying within operational parameters. Otherwise all forces will pull out of Kiev within two hours of now. Understood?”

They might think he was chasing dragons , but they would respect the chain of command and follow clear orders. Most of them, anyway. The only one who believed him was the scowling man at the back with folded arms, and Mycroft didn’t think that John Watson was necessarily going to do what Mycroft told him at all.


	11. Chapter 11

It took every ounce of John's self control to say nothing in front of the others. 

He'd thought that he couldn't get more angry than he'd been in those first crazy grief fueled months, fighting singlehandedly against what seemed like the whole world to get the truth acknowledged, and failing, and failing, and failing again. 

And giving up. Sherlock was gone. Moriarty was gone. John had seen people give their whole lives to campaigning for justice for the deceased. Mostly they seemed to die themselves of cancer or heart attack in their fifties, pleading with their doctors for the extra months that they still believed might have revealed the truth, but which would only have been wasted like the others. 

It had only taken six months fighting for John to decide that he didn't think he believed in justice any more. So he'd signed up for another tour of duty, patching up those stupid enough to do as he had done. It hadn't been going well even before he'd been flown without explanation from Munich to Kiev to join a special forces unit that clearly had no need for him under a outright hostile commander. 

Mycroft's doing. Because in those long dreadful months when a word from the only other living soul who knew the truth might have made a difference Mycroft had been silent and untraceable. But now that the world had moved on and no longer cared, the bastard dragged him a thousand miles into some half baked commando action just so John could verify Moriarty's existence for the sake of a damn accounting exercise. 

They were filing out now. He waited until they were nearly done, then shoved his way unceremoniously between Mycroft and the woman he still thought of as Anthea. 

Mycroft didn't have the decency to even look perturbed. "We will be with you shortly," he told her. "Close the door on your way out, please." 

And they were alone. 

"You're looking well, John. " Mycroft took his seat again, opened his case. 

"Don't mock me." 

Mycroft sighed. "I'm sorry that you should think me so petty. You have not had a particularly easy time since we last met. Given the circumstances you appear remarkably resilient. I trust that you'll allow me to feel a certain amount of personal comfort at that." 

John shrugged that off. "They didn't believe you." 

Mycroft still seemed unperturbed. "No. They didn't. We will just have to be a little more persuasive." 

"Persuade them yourself. I don't give a damn about this network of yours. Gerber's nothing to me." 

Mycroft shuffled the papers in the case into a neat pile. "Don't you want the truth about Moriarty out, John? To redeem Sherlock's name?" 

"Don't!" He resisted the urge to shout. "Don't you do this to me, Mycroft Holmes! Three years ago you chose that the world should believe your own brother was a fraud and a murderer rather than admit your own mistakes. Now there's what? A promotion in getting Gerber? A knighthood, maybe? You don't use me like this! You don't use Sherlock!" 

Mycroft sighed. "There is no need to be emotional, John. All you need to do is assist for a few brief hours in catching a major criminal whose network is significantly undermining the economic welfare of the United Kingdom, and then you can go back to patching up squaddies in complete obscurity, if you choose." 

He smiled, briefly and without warmth. "Alternatively I can offer you a platform, and the evidence, with which you can conclusively, and in public, establish the truth about Moriarty. The only thing required from you in exchange is that you follow your commanding officer's orders now. That hardly seems unreasonable, does it?" 

Mycroft's orders. And dammed if he was going to be Mycroft Holmes' puppet. John picked up his small rucksack and walked out, passing Dumas in the corridor without responding to his sharp query. 

Fifteen minutes later John had found a market stall to convert his paltry wad of euros into hryvnia, spent some on a shirt and a baseball cap to hide the buzz cut and some more on beer which he was nursing in the back of an all day bar, considering his options. 

He was done with an army that turned out to be yet another of Mycroft's playthings, but he doubted that it was done with him. He supposed that he was now a deserter, which sounded more like a nuisance than anything else. He had a fake passport provided by the Major and no money to fly anywhere on it. Dumas's people needed to be out of here in a few hours; they wouldn't hang around to look for him. Mycroft might be able to trace him, but why would he bother? Gerber was his target. 

Gerber. John took a swig of beer, started thinking straight for the first time since he 'd seen Mycroft. Gerber's businesses had, supposedly, been conduits for Moriarty. Gerber had taken over after Moriarty' s death. What if Paul Gerber had known Jim, not as a shadowy rumour but in person? What if he could be made to testify to the man's existence? 

If Mycroft got hold of Gerber he would disappear. Mycroft had no interest in the truth emerging. John didn't believe his promise for a moment. Which meant that somehow John had to get there first, which meant interrogating the Dutchman. Damn. He should have hung around a bit longer. 

There was still a chance. He was pretty sure that he wasn't top of Dumas's agenda, which meant that possibly the rest of the squad hadn't been told that he was AWOL. In fact Dumas was probably waiting for him to master his temper and come back and apologise. The only one he absolutely needed to avoid was Mycroft. John had no illusions about being able to fool Sherlock's brother face to face. 

 

Getting into the embassy had been easy enough. John had checked in with the guys from the unit keeping watching from the nearest bar then just strolled over and up the steps. The problem was not finding the room he wanted but avoiding being seen, at least by Dumas and Mycroft. He ducked back round a corner as the door opened, identified the voices of the major and Anthea, too low for him to make out as they all moved the other way down the corridor. As he passed the room that they 'd come out of he couldn't resist opening the door, just in case they' d left anything. Data, Sherlock would have called it. 

It wasn't empty, as he'd first thought. There was an unmoving figure silhouetted at the window. Before he could duck out again it spoke, without turning. 

"John. You had better sit down. "

For a moment he didn't recognise the odd voice. "Mycroft?" 

Mycroft turned round. His stare seemed to go straight through John, to somewhere else, but then he blinked, focused. 

"We have been deceived, John. Both of us. Sit down."

"I prefer to stand. So this Dutch guy can't give you Gerber's whereabouts? "

"Ah. No, he knows Gerber well." Mycroft walked round him to check the corridor then shut the door. "Capturing Gerber will be relatively trivial." He sounded terribly weary. 

"So what's the problem? "

"The first part of the problem, Doctor Watson, is their mutual employer. Gerber is not in charge." 

John perched on the desk, a compromise for what seemed likely to be a long conversation. "So who is?" 

"According to our informant, Jim Moriarty. "

John blinked, several times. "Not possible. Someone must be using the name."

"Very good, John." Mycroft sounded a little more like normal. "That was of course my first hypothesis. So I obtained a full description of this Moriarty. It matched in all salient details, with one important variation. This man has damage to his speech and motor functions, consistent with brain injury. Tell me, Doctor. What were the odds on him surviving a bullet through the roof of his mouth?" 

"Moriarty's alive? How the fuck could you not know?" John was on his feet. Jim was alive. Sherlock's murderer. This changed everything. What was the easiest way to get himself a gun and an address? 

Mycroft sighed. "I will have to find out." 

"So what will you do? Go in and kill him? "

"That is a tempting approach. However when I told you that we had been deceived I was not referring to his survival. Moriarty has, apparently, a guest, or possibly a captive. I was provided with another full description, as well as a name. My brother..." He stumbled, uncharacteristically. "It seems that Sherlock is not in fact quite as dead as we believed. " 

He smiled briefly. "There. You will recall that I did suggest that you sat down."


	12. Chapter 12

"Can I make a phone call?" 

The soldier shakes his head. I am not surprised, but I did hope that I might be able to say goodbye to Arja. I wish I could have told her that I did nothing wrong, this was not my fault. I heard a name that should not have been spoken, that was all. 

I would have told her that I tried what I could to come back to her. I thought I could make these Englishmen protect me, but the man, the soft spoken man, the British screen villain straight off the set of an American action film, took everything I knew. So now they will shoot me, or, much worse, throw me back to the ones that I've betrayed. I ought to beg them to kill me but I don't want to die yet. I want to see Arja again. 

I scowl at the soldier. Maybe she will learn, somehow, that I did not go down easily. She would be pleased at that, a little. Her tough guy, she calls me. I should never have taken the job with those crazy people, however good the money was. One name, that was all. One name. 

The door opens. The quiet man again, and another, a soldier. I look into his face. I have seen that hard, still look before. Now, I think, I die.

"Did you see Sherlock? " he demands. 

Do I say yes? Do I say no? Sherlock, the quiet man had said, but I was told only Sigerson. This man doesn't have a gun, but men like that don't need guns to kill. Whaley - Gerber - didn't need one. He would have killed Sigerson bare handed if we hadn't been ordered to stop him. I don't know what to answer. This man frightens me. 

"This has been covered, " the quiet one says, sharply. "The man he described was Sherlock. I have no doubt of it." 

"I wouldn't trust you to tell me the fucking time " the soldier snarls. And, at me. "Sherlock Holmes. Do you know who I'm taking about? "

I don't. I shake my head, apologetically. 

"Here." He pulls something from his back pocket and I flinch, but it is only a wallet, and in it a photo. The bony faced man looks like the target. I nod, hoping that will please him. "Yes. Sigerson." 

"Are you fucking sure? Because if you're lying... "

I don't want to lie to this man. I just want him to go away without wrapping his hands around my neck. I'm larger than he is but it doesn't matter. He is ferocious. 

"What did you do to him? What did Moriarty do?" 

"Nothing ," I want to say. " I did nothing. It was all the others. " But I have already told the other one. 

Slowly, carefully, I explain. The train. The cafe that we took him from. The injections. "They didn't harm him, I swear. The doctor knew how much to give. A few hours only." 

"What happened in those few hours? "

My life ended. "Sigerson said that Whaley was Paul Gerber. Then Whaley hit him until the boss told us to stop him. "

"He's injured." 

The soldier's voice made it clear that this would be a very bad thing for me. 

"No, no. The doctor looked at him, said nothing was broken. Just bruises. " I sketch across my face, demonstrating where the bruises would be. "We took him back to his hotel, last night." 

"Where is he now? "

I shake my head. " I saw Whaley look at us, because we heard the name. I thought he would kill me so I came here. I don't know anything after that. "

The quiet man says " He left the hotel two hours ago, apparently unaccompanied. His luggage is still in his room. That's all we have for now. "

"Have you fingerprinted it? What about DNA?" The soldier snaps orders and questions at this man who I thought was in charge. I do not understand who they are. I expected the British policemen to come for Whaley. These are not policemen. 

"The cases were discovered just under fifteen minutes ago. Everything is being expedited, John. A little patience... "

"Patience! Jim will murder Sherlock before we catch up with him!" 

"Moriarty is playing with Sherlock, " the quiet man says, firmly. " He is likely to do so for some time longer. The main risk to my brother's life right now comes from precipitous actions on our part."

The soldier turned back to me. 'What would you have done, if he hadn't goaded Gerber? "

"I don't know ' goaded', sorry."

"Made him angry. What did Moriarty tell you to do? "

Sigerson is this Mycroft's brother? They don't look much alike. Who is the soldier, then? I don't want to tell him what the boss had ordered. 

"He said beat him up. A bit. Not much. "

"A paralysed man and you were ordered to what? Hit him? Kick him? " 

I nod. 

"What else? "

Mycroft hadn't asked this. I could lie, but I don't dare. I think this man will know, somehow, or will find out. 

"We were told to...." All the decent English words are gone from my head. I can think of nothing but the worst. "To fuck him." 

The man's eyes meet mine with a cold hatred. I can feel a blush.across my neck. "I didn't want to! I didn't like it. I'm not a stinking gay." 

"You didn't like it? Who did you do it to?"

"No-one. Just a guy from the street. They were trying out the drugs on him. The boss told us to... No-one who mattered . Just a couple of drunks. Not your Sherlock, I promise. I didn't touch him, not once. "

He has turned away from me, for which I am thankful. "So that's Jim's playful intention. And Sherlock is missing. Give me the bloody hotel address and a gun, Mycroft. I'll take my chances with his guards if you won't." 

Mycroft looks at me but I don't know what he's thinking. Maybe he understands that a man doesn't always have a choice, not when he's just the muscle, just following orders. The soldier can't have been a real soldier long because I think he doesn't understand that at all. 

Mycroft talks back to the soldier, but he watches me. "Sherlock had been missing for three years, John. In all that time he's seen no need to call on you, or me, for help. I think we can assume that we have sufficient time to formulate a campaign plan rather more sophisticated than simply charging in with guns blazing and hoping that Sherlock is not in the line of fire." 

Whatever they are talking about, it 's not me. I sit very still, hoping that they will go away now. Coming here was bad. These men will not help me, for certain. I will run away, take my chances with Gerber and the one in the wheelchair. 

"There is a tenement block, 300 metres from Moriarty's hotel with direct line of sight. The swat team is securing access to the roof. Once we get accurate surveillance, in approximately ten minutes, plans can be made. Sensible ones. "

The soldier walks away from both of us, pauses at the door. "I want to speak to Dumas. Now. They aren't going anywhere near Sherlock or Moriarty without me." 

Mycroft brushes down his ridiculous posh clothes, sighs, follows him out. The guard stands, impassive. I think about Sigerson, about how he was skinny and covered in blood, and the men who want to rescue him. Only Whaley will come for me, with a knife or a gun. Then I think about Arja again, and home. The door does not open again except for a change of guard, all the rest of the long day.


	13. Chapter 13

He fixes the scope into position with rain-awkward fingers, takes another look. 

Second floor down, third window across. 

Two people. The first is sitting propped up against the headboard, white skin against crimson covers, a dark patch of hair or underwear can just be made out at his groin. Definitely 'his'. Slender hipped and the man is tall. He's holding something aloft, moving it to his face. A glass, probably. Or a radio. Or something else that John hasn't thought of. That's what it always used to be; something he hadn't thought of and Sherlock inevitably had. 

The other figure is lying on its side, up against the first. Shorter. Darker. This one could be female, small breasted, or male. Also naked.  
John and half a dozen soldiers are up here on a tenement roof in a downpour, their fourth position in the last two hours, looking for a glimpse of Moriarty. They've peered into two dozen windows of the luxury hotel already and it's not the first couple that John has spied on having daylight sex in the decadently Western bedrooms. He is about to move the scope onwards when the tall man turns his head and even from that distance the profile is utterly, shockingly familiar.

Sherlock. That really is Sherlock. Last seen - last touched - all life extinguished, sprawled bloody and limp on the pavement. Buried and mourned, and now, inexplicably, sprawling whitely naked this time on a king sized bed in Kiev. It feels like a hallucination, like a movie, like anything but reality. John lifts his head and the fantasy vanishes; there is only the wet concrete roof and the distant hotel with its dolls house windows, and Sherlock is dead and gone again. 

-John. Have you found him? 

John claims the eyepiece again before anyone can take it from him. Tiny stick figure Sherlock, reaching across to the bedside table, shifting himself a little higher up the pillows. No doubt talking, because when did he ever stop talking? It had been the strangest thing about Sherlock's death, the silence afterwards. 

-It's him. 

Saying the words doesn't make them feel any more real. 

A small intake of breath, next to his ear. 

-And Moriarty? 

John can see the pale, miniature oval of the second figure's face now, resting on Sherlock's shoulder, the bottom half veiled in the blackness that must be facial hair. Male, then. Jim had always been cleanshaven, but the Dutchman had said a beard. 

-Maybe. I don't know. 

Surely Sherlock wouldn't share a bed so casually with the man who tried to destroy him? And yet who else can it be? (Three years. Sherlock could have found a lover in three years. In three years Sherlock could have changed that much.) 

Two naked men, an intimate scene. How can either of them know that they are being watched? The other man - Jim? Not Jim? - moves a blurred thin arm to rest across Sherlock's stomach. John can't possibly make out their expressions but what he can see is enough to make him uncomfortably conscious of his status as peeping tom. 

-Dr Watson! Either communicate or move away! 

If he releases his grip on the scope then the figures will vanish. 

-They aren't doing anything. Talking, I think. 

\- Visible weapons? 

That is Dumas. John swallows inappropriate laughter. 

\- No weapons visible. Nowhere to hide them. They're just lying there. 

The hotel heating must be good. Up here in the rain it is uncomfortably cold. Water drips down John's face and he wipes at it briefly, puts his hand back on the cold metal. 

Mycroft tuts, impatient, the sound bizarrely homely. 

\- I may be able to read more of the situation than you can.

He really doesn't want to relinquish the eyepiece. He doesn't want to banish the vision. What if Mycroft looks through the scope and sees nobody familiar? What if Sherlock leaves the room while he isn't looking and never reappears? 

\- Use another one. 

\- Lieutenant! Watch your tone! 

Mycroft interrupts Dumas's ire. 

\- Another telescope, trained on that window, Major. 

It is doubly peculiar to know that Mycroft is now standing next to him, seeing what he does. He waits, stomach churning, for the man to say "That's not him". How could it be, after all? Sherlock is dead. Buried. Gone. 

\- Undoubtedly Jim Moriarty. 

A pause. 

\- And my brother, of course. Intriguing. 

There is a pain in John's gut. Not an emotional one. An actual twisting, physical pain that makes him want to turn away and throw up acid bile onto the grey puddled concrete. 

-Is he all right? 

-Sherlock? Without knowing anything of his experiences during the past three years I really couldn't say. I doubt it though. If he had been "all right" then don't you think he would have contacted us, or at least you, before now? 

John can't start thinking about that yet. Sherlock had said goodbye and jumped. Stick to the matter in hand and try not to be violently sick. He lowers his voice, aware of the people around them. 

-Has he been... assaulted? 

Silence. 

-Mycroft. Look at him. You said you could read the fucking situation! Look at him! 

A snort. 

\- Sherlock's insouciance is doubtless for Jim's benefit. I would have to be a great deal closer to detect any flaws in his performance. 

Christ. That could mean yes. 

-So we go in then. Now. Before it happens again. 

-We know the hotel is heavily seeded with armed guards. I need to understand the situation, John, in order to advise. Let me watch them. 

They are nearly a mile from the hotel, across heavy city traffic. Gaining access to the windows on this side had been difficult. Dumas has men closer, but it is Sherlock in there. John imagines watching through the scope as soldiers break in, seeing a stray bullet's darkness flower across Sherlock's chest. Arriving too late, again, to touch anything but still flesh. They mustn't go in without him but he can't tear himself away from the twisted miracle that is the sight of Sherlock naked with Jim Moriarty. If he stops watching anything could happen. Anything at all. If he watches... the same but at least he will know. 

-Quickly, then. 

John is giving the orders, now. Mycroft is meek. Dumas confused. Sherlock has caused this upheaval merely by being not dead. John pictures the small turbulence of the tiny image growing to a tidal surge engulfing all their lives again, ripping them from all the hidden and fragile places they've made their own in the last three years. It's the only thing he wanted, and he finds himself terrified that it might be happening now, and happening wrong. Not just Sherlock Holmes come back to the world, but Sherlock Holmes and Jim Moriarty, intertwined. 


	14. Chapter 14

_how? molly hooper of course. silent molly . did you break her mind to keep her silent, little brother? were you merely cruel, or were the stakes too high?_

There is a wheelchair next to the bed. Confirmation or merely another careful prop in the trap set for me? And set by whom? I am inclined to believe in the Dutchman's fear of Gerber and therefore his description of Moriarty's disability, but I retain the capacity for scepticism. 

_-set up to fool your opponent, obviously. but jim put a bullet through his own brain before you jumped. so why did you still jump?_

I can see clothes scattered on the bedroom floor, some over the arm of the wheelchair. Untidy, like Sherlock - Moriarty in captivity was obsessively neat. If Sherlock undressed them both, what would that say? That he was at least cooperating, was some level of active participant.

_\- the assassins who did not assassinate. a threat that had passed even before we buried you. why keep the pretence going, sherlock? (why do that to me? wrong question. wrong answer. ask rather why do it to john?)_

Moriarty is sandwiched between pillows and my brother. Sherlock is actively keeping him propped up and presumably comfortable, with one arm around his shoulders. It is a posture which normally suggests power and control. However given Jim's mental prowess and the time he has had to adjust to his injuries he is unlikely to feel dominated simply by a display of superior physical ability. 

_\- or did you find out that moriarty was alive even before the killers caught their planes home? he must have been critically ill for days. more likely weeks or months. surely you could have neutralised him? (i could have done it for you, if you'd told me. if you'd trusted me.)_

Is this scene post coital, pre coital or nothing of the kind? (Neither of them appear to be smoking cigarettes, and the resolution is not good enough to observe arousal states directly.) Ways to tell? 

**[John is impatient with my patience. John is always impatient these days, and bad tempered. The traumatic end to his association with my brother has left deep scars. He is not stable enough to deal with the resurrection of either Sherlock or his murderer, certainly not both together. It was a mistake to bring him here, but who could have anticipated this? John Watson is another destabilising factor in a situation that already has too many variables to be safe.]**

No movement. Just the two men, entwined. If my brother were capable of being seduced then a formidable and unsentimental intelligence focused entirely on him alone would have the greatest probability of success. Everyone is vulnerable to falling for something. Jim Moriarty knows just what to offer each of us. 

_\- if moriarty offered you what I refused you might just be foolhardy enough to accept. o smallest of brothers, where was this overwhelming need of yours for our constant attention born from?_

Recap. Moriarty chased Sherlock across Europe. Imprisoned him in his own body, let Gerber inflict minor damage, let him go. So Sherlock returned to Jim, an animal at bay, turning. Moriarty's supreme talent, to lead one through the maze and down the narrowing alleys until choice is gone and there seems no way open. If Sherlock is facing walls in each direction what will he do? 

_-three years ago you jumped._

Movement. The door opens. A black clothed man sidles in, stands, shoulders hunched, by the door. He does not want to be there, so why has he come? They have both lifted their heads to look at him. 

Long enough for a report, or an explanation. Finally he is dismissed, shoots back through the doorway. Sherlock swings his legs over the side of the bed, extracts his arm from Jim's shoulders and stands. **[John hisses.]** Around the bed, to the window. He leans out, raises an arm, waves vigorously in our direction, then the curtains pull closed and we can see nothing. 

**["Christ! " from beside me.]**

I can only concur. 

***

The wave was ridiculously ostentatious. I adore it. He ignores me. 

"We should move out." 

I point out that there's no hurry. No-one's coming for us just yet. We have thrown them all into confusion. 

"Them. My brother and John. " He speaks as if he can't quite believe what he's just been told. Poor Sherlock thought he was all alone in the world. Except for me ."How precisely did they find out I was alive, Jim?" 

No need to sound so accusing. I've no hand in this aggravating coitus interruptus. Erik flees to the British embassy, that much I've established, and a few hours later Big Brother swoops in with the SAS, just as soldier boy gets pulled without warning or explanation out of Germany. It's taken a while for this information to get to me - I did leave the strictest of instructions that we were not to be disturbed, and the minions took far too long to put all this together and come to the obvious conclusion. We are under attack. 

Has it spoilt your plans, pet? 

He isn't rising to that one. He's not ready to tell me yet why he never went home. Instead he glares at me, suspicious as hell. 

I sigh. This is what happens when I set the bar too high. Listen, Sherlock. I'm good. I'm phenomenally good. But I'm not omnipotent. Sometimes the unpredictability of other people's blundering ignorance manages to screw my stuff up. This is one of those occasions. 

In the back of my head vicious thoughts start to coalesce into bloody crimson schemes for my old pal Mycroft,. Interfering Mycroft, just at the wrong time. I've been playing his brother for hours now - holding him on the line, letting it loose again when he thrashes too hard, checking him and reeling him in a little and always bringing him closer. He knows what I'm doing, of course - our conversation has touched on little else - but he concedes that doesn't make him immune to the consequences. Dear Sherlock still claims to be entirely unaroused but over the course of this little stopgo updown forwardback dance he's become a great deal less uncomfortable and a great deal more amused by his situation. 

I had just talked him into permitting my hands a little more intimacy (merely so he could demonstrate his continued physical indifference, you understand, ) but now he is half the room away and aggrieved, with John bloody Watson on his mind. It will take more time than I can spare to argue him back to bed and cooperation. 

I briefly consider skipping the rest of the seduction and having him anyway. I have ample time for that. But I don't settle for second best, not with Sherlock. I shall just have to consider it groundwork for later. 

We'll come back to this, I promise him. He does not seem particularly averse to the idea. He helps me dress, carries me back to the chair. He seems to be getting ready to run with me, which is... interesting. The men hunting us out there are the only allies he had in the world. I, our dance notwithstanding, remain the greatest threat that he will ever face. 

***

john john is in the city john knows im alive john has seen me john has seen me naked with moriarty john will think plan say do ??? 

i don't know my current information on john is third hand at least I cannot deduce without bricks and mortar third hand john is unpredictable if he were here i could read him but he is not cannot be here i do not want him here 

mycroft is easier mycrofts personal and professional interests coincide mycroft will go after jim with everything available mycroft will try (moderately) hard to not kill me in the process mycroft is not used to an uneasy conscience mycroft finds it intolerable mycroft will believe that only jims destruction will ease it 

jim is frustrated jim is angry jim is a killer jim has extraordinary self control jim may choose not to exercise it jim had no interest in keeping anyone in the world alive (except me) jim is jealous jim is jealous of john jim is extraordinarily dangerous right now jim will drench the carpet at my feet with my friends blood unless I stop him jim is completely dependent on his people and his technology 

jim is remarkably easy to kill

everyone wants jim dead 

everyone 

he grins at me childish conspiratorial snug in his wheelchair and I smile back

***  
I. Am. Going. To. Kill. Them. Both. 

Kill. Them. Kill. Him. Kill. Him. Kill. Sher. Lock. Kill. 

Each word sears across my brain as a foot hits the concrete. Running. Of course. 

Dodge in and out, on to the road and back on the pavement. Taxis hoot but I need to be moving. Five minutes. Four and a half. Four. Going. To. Kill. Him. Smug. Crazy. Bastard. Waved. 

Three. Bloody. Years. And. He. Waves. At. Me. 

Phone vibrates at my hip and I slow enough to answer. 

"John. Stop. "

Wrong Holmes. Shove it back in my pocket and keep running. 

The incredulity has gone. The bewilderment has lifted. Sherlock waved at me. Sherlock is absolutely and completely alive. And I am going to wring his bloody neck, just as soon as I've got him away from Jim Moriarty. 

Two minutes. One and a half. One. There is the hotel; nearly up to the doors. I ought to have a plan. I have a plan. Find Sherlock. Yell at him. Leave. 

And if someone shoots me before I get there, well, that's just too bad.


	15. Chapter 15

"My name," he said to the men facing him, "is John Watson and I want to see Jim Moriarty. Now." 

One of them gestured at him with a snub nosed gun and he stepped out of the lift, glanced along the corridor to the closed door of the room that he calculated Sherlock had been in a few minutes before, then returned his attention to the immediate danger. 

"This way. " An open door in the other direction. John baulked. "Your boss will want to see me. "

" He will, soon enough. Move. "

There seemed little option. John entered the second bedroom. The lead man tossed his gun to a colleague, pushed John up to face pastel wallpaper. John endured the hands down his sides and up his thighs with barely restrained impatience. 

Finally the man stepped back. "Take your clothes off." 

"I'm not wired."

"Fine of you to tell us. Strip."

American. John wondered where Paul Gerber might be. He stripped down to his underpants without further comment and after careful examination his clothes were returned, minus his wallet and phone. 

Dressed again, he waited. The American had disappeared, leaving two guards at the door. John's racing heart had very little to do with the guns trained on him, or even the prospect of becoming collateral damage in an imminent SAS assault. Mycroft would surely give him just a little time, provided that no-one from here fired first. 

Time to do what, exactly, would depend on Moriarty. And Sherlock. Sherlock. Sherlock. Sherlock. He started pacing across the room, followed by the gun barrels. Sherlock.

A side door opened. "Come through." 

Sherlock's face was badly bruised, as he'd been warned. If it hadn't been for that he would have said that the man looked like he belonged here, with Moriarty . One hand rested lightly on Jim's shoulder. Sherlock's face was inscrutable, his voice steady. 

"Hello John." 

For three years he'd thought of Sherlock as some sort of martyr, terribly vulnerable, cruelly driven to his own death and horribly vilified afterwards. He'd been wrong. Sherlock had played them all for fools from the moment of that jump, was doubtless still playing. John looked away from him, down, to Moriarty's bearded face. 

"Is this what you were after, all the time? "

Moriarty's fingers moved over a keypad for a long time. A pause.  
 **Always the romantic, Doctor .** The voice came from the chair speakers. **No. This is just light entertainment. The real game is rather more interesting and a lot more dangerous. Isn't that right, pet?**

"Undoubtedly." 

"Light entertainment. " John repeated blankly. " That's what I came here to rescue you from?"

Sherlock shrugged. "You should have been aware if you'd thought it through that your assistance would not be necessary." 

Thirty seconds back with Sherlock and he was already been told off for being stupid. After he'd risked his life - was still risking his life. 

"I know your lover boy here had you beaten up yesterday. He'll do that again, or worse."

"Muh worz. " Jim said aloud, with satisfaction. 

John knew Sherlock well enough to spot the briefest of emotions flickering across his face and vanishing. 

"Is that really what you want? "

Sherlock's free hand tapped irritably on the back of the chair. "It would have been better if you had continued to believe me dead."

"Better for who?"

"Whom, " Sherlock said. 

"What?"

Moriarty's electronic voice. **Better for whom.** Typing. **Complement of a preposition.**

" Oh, for... " He nearly told them that they deserved each other but it wasn't true. Couldn't be true. "Did you two plan all this - both your deaths - together, then?" 

"No. " Sherlock lifted his hand away from Moriarty's shoulder. "I had no idea that he had survived until a few days ago. He knew about me for a little longer - a week or two." 

Jim was typing again. **Nearly three months.** Pause. **A whole seven weeks to track you down, you wriggly thing, you.** Pause. **Another three to definitely establish your aliases, finances and contacts, or lack of them.** Pause. **Then I said hello.**

That had to be better, John thought. At least the questions wouldn't all have Moriarty as the answer. Which meant that he probably didn't want to ask them here. 

"Can you come with me?"

Sherlock's glance flickered to the men with guns. Moriarty gestured jerkily. "Go a plah. Call ov yoh brths dohs. See yoh laher. " 

John couldn't make out all of his meaning but Sherlock seemed to. He strode to the door, glanced over his shoulder at John. "Come on, then. Shall we see what sort of mess is waiting for us out there?" 

 

"Surely that was too easy?" The two of them were standing in the lift, contemplating their reflections. 

"There's an SAS squad outside Jim's door. I'm more use to him out here reasoning with my brother than as a hostage, and you're no use as a hostage at all." Sherlock ran a hand through his hair. The lift pinged arrival on the ground floor. 

"Oh. "

Sherlock looked round directly at him." Don't sulk, John. It's Mycroft and his soldiers that Jim needs to control right now. They wouldn't hold back for your presence. They probably wouldn't hold back for mine. I've been dead for three years, what's a little longer? Hands up. "

The foyer seemed empty, unnaturally so. Sherlock stepped out of the lift, hands over his head. "Mycroft's men outside the main doors. Moriarty's behind the desk," he said quietly to John. "Walk very slowly towards the exit." And, aloud, "We have Jim's permission to leave. You should have radio confirmation." 

John walked, slowly, conscious of far too many unseen guns pointed his way. It was familiar, too familiar. What had Moriarty said, years ago? He muttered to Sherlock. "Changeable." 

Sherlock murmured back, "Let's hope not." 

They weren't yet halfway to the doors however when a sharp voice echoed in the foyer. "Stop." 

Sherlock stopped, and John with him. 

"He says one of you can go. Just one."

Sherlock sighed, just audible to John. "Mr Gerber. You and I have the same problem, it seems. Far more people now know that we are alive than can be disposed of, intimidated or bought. What's your proposed solution, Paul?" 

"Ten seconds. One of you back in the lift." Gerber sounded stressed and harsh. The click of a safety, off. They could die here, so easily, both of them. 

John took a deep breath. "Just talk to your brother. Tell him I'm not dispensable, " he said aloud and he turned, walked back alone the way that the two of them had come. He thought Sherlock might follow, or at least call him back, but the man didn't. Everyone was silent, just watching, as he walked into Moriarty's web for a second time. The first time he'd done it for his best friend. This time it felt as if he were doing it for a dangerous stranger. 

***

John has been a hostage all along. In London, in Afghanistan, in Germany, with Mycroft, with me, and now all alone in Jim's hands. His physical location makes little difference. There has never been any way to keep him safe except by neutralising Moriarty and anyone else who knows who I am and might want to influence or respond to my actions. 

This should be self evident to my brother, and yet he's angry with me beyond all reason. Not just about John, of course. His humility at my gravestone (all those flowers), his lingering guilt, his pathetic attempts at reparation, all reduced to meaninglessness by my continued existence. And he didn't work it out; that stings a great deal. It is John that he shouts at me about, however. John who despises him. 

"Moriarty is very likely to kill him. "

I've been aware of that, of course, from the first second that I recognised Jim in the coffee house in Munich. We had a deal. I would die and the others would live and I cheated. Jim is, by his logic and mine, entitled to those three deaths. Every hour that goes by that he doesn't take them is a small victory for me but I can't keep winning all the time. He wouldn't like that at all. 

So I have to give him other things in exchange for his temporary forbearance . Myself to play with. John, for his amusement. Hints about what happened on the rooftop. And now Mycroft and his soldiers have to back off, to let Moriarty out and away from grey Kiev to win us all a little more time, but Mycroft will not do it. He thinks that he has Jim trapped and he may shout at me about John but it won't stop him sending his people in there with guns blazing to get his kill. 

"John ceased to be my responsibility when he decided that he was no longer bound by military discipline. In my judgement one bystander may be an acceptable, though deeply regrettable, cost. You have twenty three minutes to get him out, Sherlock. After that we must take Moriarty down." 

He will not be shaken. Duty will not let him act to save a man whose existence embarrasses him. How convenient duty is. Whilst I was lost and anonymous I made my own decisions and no-one was used against me. Resurrection is an unmitigated disaster, a sentiment with which Paul Gerber would doubtless agree. 

I make one more try. "Jim's criminal empire is gone. You know that, Mycroft. You've been tracking its dissolution for years. This is now a personal vendetta of yours, rather than a dispassionate assessment of a significant threat to the UK. " 

He looks at me, slightly scornful. "Are you trying to tell me that Jim Moriarty has changed?" 

I think of the man chasing me across Europe, of the attempt at seduction. He 's still very clever, powerful, malevolent - I couldn't escape him - but his focus has altered . When we first met, Jim showed me an operation that spanned continents. Now he controls a few floors around his wheelchair. I don't know precisely what he wants from his unexpected reincarnation but it's on a far smaller scale than it was. 

"Yes, " I tell my deeply sceptical brother. " He's changed. "

***

**He's changed.**

John stared down at the figure slumped slightly to the left. Jim tapped again. 

**Would Sherlock you knew abandon you here?**

John shook his head. "The Sherlock I knew? What makes you think I ever knew him?" 

**Still sore about jump? He's not sorry. Not changed that much.**

"So how has he changed? "

**Three years freedom. Realised old life crap. Rules, ethics, limits. Doesn't want any of it. Going to vanish again. Sorry. Get a dog next time.**

The computerised voice was emotionless. John bit down on the pain. No. Jim Moriarty didn't speak for Sherlock. Things weren't twisted around that far. However plausible it might sound... 

"Why did you hurt him?"

Jim smiled, lopsided. **No rules this side fence. Liberating. Scary. And it so tempts him.**

John shook his head, put more conviction than he felt into the words. "Sherlock's not amoral. He just doesn't like people much. And I don't mind if he doesn't come back, as long as he's safe, which he'll never be with you." 

**Liar.** Moriarty tipped his head, slowly onto one side, then back, brown eyes glinting. **You think he owes you for those years. All that pain. Payback not looking promising so far, is it?**

Full sentences. It seemed that Moriarty had become involved in this conversation, even though it was only with John. 

"You're trapped, Jim. The armed forces outside won't let you out. I'm no use to you as a hostage. Sherlock told me that much. Shouldn't you be working on getting out of here rather than annoying me? "

 **Sorted.** The slight figure looked smug. **Just final touch.** He spoke aloud. "Gerher. Go ahte Shehloh. Kill hih." 

"No! " John whirled on a heel but there were two men in the way. He floored the first with a fist but the second brought a gun barrel round to collide with his head and he was on the floor as well, struggling against the hands pinning him down. "Jim! Fuck you! No!" The door closed; Gerber had gone. 

"Lihl faith. " Moriarty moved the chair to look down on him. "Gih, idioh" 

"What? "

**It's a gift. Idiot.**

They let him roll up and onto his knees, almost eye to eye. "For Sherlock?" 

Moriarty essayed an eye roll, muscles in his cheek twitching. He gestured at the men. **Stupid. Take him away.**

*Wait! " John tried and failed to shake the hands on him away. "What do you need me for? "

Moriarty raised a hand, kept it, shaking, a couple of inches above the arm rest. 

"I doh need yoh" he slurred. "I doh eve wan yoh. But, John Wahsoh, you fren mahd a barhan with me foh his life. An noh I own yoh." 

He dropped his quivering hand and John was dragged away struggling and cursing at him and Sherlock both.


	16. Chapter 16

The minions remove the annoyance and there is blessed silence. I need to listen to the feed in my earpiece. Sherlock had not had the time or possibly the inclination to find and remove the bug in his jacket. 

"He sent me." Another thud, another muffled scream. "Kill you!" 

The silence is long. They will be looking at each other. Neither Holmes needs the nature or the purpose of the gift explaining. 

"You can't be sure. " Mycroft, cold and bad tempered. "What have you seen?" 

"As much as I need. He has nothing ; a dozen good people, smart telecommunications, money. He'd struggle to successfully raid a sub post office, Mycroft. Half his brain is missing. But he has John, and now you have Gerber. Call it quits. Go home and let me deal with him."

That's the key. Mycroft has too few people for both Gerber's rendition and a full assault on my position. It was Gerber that he came for. What am I but a sad, crippled, obsessed hasbeen and officially non existent to boot? Go away, Mycroft, my dear old playmate. Please Sherlock, save John, take your wanted criminal back to British justice with no shots fired, no diplomatic incident, no trouble. Fuck off before I finally lose my temper and have you beheaded and put the blame on someone else entirely. 

The sigh is barely audible. "Let us hope that you judge Moriarty correctly." 

He is calling them off. Good. One signal and the aggressive police officers, inquisitive journalists and aggrieved diplomats poised for interference stand down. Sub post office, indeed. Does Sherlock really believe that I show him all my hand? 

After a few minutes - long enough that someone could have reported the start of the team's withdrawal to me - I send a text to Sherlock. It's time to move on. 

***

Sherlock flicks his phone open and reads the text. He always looks younger in profile. I cannot just walk away without answers. 

"Will you come back to London? "

He's distracted for a couple of seconds by Jim's message, but then he closes the phone with a snap, focuses on me. 

"What would be the point?" 

I've missed him, oddly. Certainly his gravestone was a poor substitute for his presence. "Your innocence would be a great deal easier to establish that way." 

He lifts his head to look down his nose at me. "Again. What would be the point?" 

"You were not the only one affected, Sherlock. "

"And in three years you have not lifted a finger to help any of them, Mycroft, though you could undoubtedly have made their lives considerably less difficult. I find this sudden concern for their welfare unconvincing."

He turns everything against me. "I had no reason to believe my interference would be welcome. They were not my friends. I merely suggest that you might want to consider the effect on the people that you are supposedly attached to before deciding to remain a discredited suicide." 

"I have considered it. No. I will not be returning to London or to life." 

"And what about John?"

Sherlock's face goes stiff. "I'll think of something." 

I do not think that John Watson will be easily manipulated into letting Sherlock go. But then he may not survive long enough to be a problem. 

"So you go back now to Jim Moriarty? "

"We have unfinished business."

"In a hotel bed." I'm acutely disappointed that he should fall at last to someone as obvious and as unpleasant as Moriarty. Sherlock should knew better than to repeat my mistakes. 

"Business that requires extremely careful handling. There are multiple lives at stake."

"If you would tell me, I could almost certainly assist. "

"You could almost certainly do nothing of the kind. I would trust John to handle him better than I would you." 

"Fortunate, " I snap back, annoyed, " given the decisions that you have made so far today. Do you really think John is handling him extremely carefully in there? "

"Once you and your tin soldiers have got out of my way I will be able to find out." 

He is impatient for me to leave. I doubt that he will willingly contact me in the future. It would be sentimental to see this as the chance to say farewell that was denied to me before but there are practical considerations before I go. He is family. 

"Do you have enough money?"

That amuses him. "Of course." He snorts at my curiosity. "I liberated ample funds from people with no legal entitlement to them and intentions for them that were definitely antisocial. If I need to I can repeat the process. I don't intend to starve in some garret, Mycroft. I can look after myself." 

The evidence suggests otherwise. My eyes don't need to linger deliberately over his bruised face to make the point. I feel an illogical urge to try to scrub the yellow-brown marks clean, but the damage can't be wiped away. 

"The man who did that is in your custody."

"But not the man who arranged it."

My brother gives me his most impenetrable blank look. 

"I have contacts," I offer, "in most countries. If you should need assistance. "

"That won't happen." 

He intends to spend the rest of his life alone. That's the optimistic explanation. The less optimistic is that he intends to spend it with Jim Moriarty. The least palatable, of course, is that he simply doesn't intend to continue with it in any form for much longer. I prod. 

"And supposing that Moriarty can be defeated? What will you do then?"

For the first time I see a flicker of uncertainty. Are you lost, little brother? Perhaps I can still help. "Problems occasionally arise in my line of work that do not require a presence in London to investigate."

He shakes his head. "Sherlock Holmes can't be your consultant any more. Forget that you saw me here." 

"Don't be stupid. "

"No. You can't forget, I suppose. Keep silent, then. I insist that you never try to find me again, by any means. No one must get the slightest hint that I survived." 

Moriarty already knows where he is. "Who else is there?" He brushes down his lapels in a way that signifies discomfort. 

"It doesn't matter who." 

"I don't understand." Who is he frightened of? How can that not matter? 

"No, you wouldn't. Because you never had a friend. Only your work". 

I draw myself up a little straighter. "There was always family, Sherlock. Even when you chose not to acknowledge it." 

"Family." His tone is scathing. "Yet when the two collided, you sold my life to Jim Moriarty for the government. You still have work, Mycroft. Go away and do it. The only things you can do for me now are to keep Paul Gerber silent and leave me alone."

I try once again to make sense of him. "Is this some deal you've reached with Moriarty? You stay dead and they stay safe?" 

He shakes his head fractionally. "It's not that easy. Please, Mycroft. Just go." 

There is a hint of genuine supplication in his voice along with the customary arrogance and irritation. Whatever the danger is, he believes in it. I am torn between staying and leaving. Neither seems to help. Neither seems bearable. 

"Let me know that you're still alive, at least. I'm sure you can do that without significant risk." I try to sound reasonable. "Once a year, on your birthday. Send me a message, Sherlock, even if it's only a word. If I don't receive it I will track you down, alive or dead." 

He is scanning my face, reading my motivation. It should not be difficult. I am only human, in the end. 

"If it matters that much to you, one word. It will not be traceable back to me, and you must promise not to alert anyone by trying."

I nod. "The word?" 

He smiles properly for the first time since he came out of the hotel. The bruises seem to fade a little as his face lights up with a hint of the old mischief. "You'll know it when you see it." 

If this is the last that I will see of him, it might as well be smiling. I extend a hand and he looks briefly surprised then shakes it, his cool fingers wrapped around my warm ones. The soldiers are waiting with my prisoner. Our permission to be here has run out; if I do not take him to the airport now we may lose him to Ukrainian bureaucracy. I let go, turn without a backward look and leave my brother to Moriarty and his other, still unnamed demons. I think it possible that I will never see him again, but in three months and 11 days I will be waiting for his word. If I do not receive it then Jim Moriarty will be the first of many to die. 

***

It seems that blood is thicker then rank betrayal, after all. How delightful. The conversation is filed and cross referenced; I may decide to send my own token in three months time. Particularly if I've killed Sherlock by then. 

Enough with the family reunion. There goes Mycroft Holmes and his meagre prize. I want his brother's attention back on me. And I want it right now.


	17. Chapter 17

The traffic a hundred feet underneath his window was moving again in a cacophony of snarling engines and blasts of horns. Pedestrians scurried below him but he caught no glimpse of pale faces turned upwards. Evidence that the brief siege of the hotel was over and Mycroft's special forces were gone. 

John slammed the sash window closed and stepped back into the safety of the room with a feeling of intense relief. Still silence on the other side of the locked door. He was beginning to wonder if they had all left the hotel now that the siege was lifted. Maybe the next person to unlock the door would be a chambermaid come to clean the vacated rooms. 

He doubted that it was going to be that easy. "I own you." Moriarty had said. "Your friend made a bargain with me for his life and now I own you." He couldn't bring himself to believe that Jim was lying, not with that much sheer delighted malice in his wrecked voice.

For want of anything better to do he sat down again on the pale green bedspread. Staring at the flaking white paint around the edges of the door, he was starting to reach some unpleasant conclusions as to how he'd ended up here. It was all beginning to fit. 

Sherlock had rejected the work involved in retrieving his shattered reputation, rejected Baker Street consulting for stupid boring clients and the limitations of working alongside the police bureaucracy. Rejected, no doubt, John's perpetual nagging at him to behave. He'd faked his death to be free of a life that irked him, and he'd left his friends - his acquaintances - to pick up the pieces of their own lives as well as they could. 

That much seemed unarguably true. He must have known the difference that a simple word would have made to all of them. At the least he could have tried to do something for poor Molly. But nothing. He'd chosen to abandon them completely. John's hands had tightened around handfuls of the coverlet; he relaxed them with an effort. 

The other implausible survivor had traced Sherlock, and then what? The bargain. John found it hard to believe in the depth of that betrayal, even now, unless... had Sherlock for once been too clever? Was that why Sherlock had been so dismayed to see him, to reveal that he was alive? Was it John's life for his, but only if John found them? 

It must have seemed a safe enough bargain when he was constrained by military service and thought them both dead. Sherlock literally had the whole world to stay lost in, but he hadn't counted on Paul Gerber, or his own brother, or plain dumb luck. Payment was due and he'd let John walk back into Moriarty's camp as his part of the deal. 

John smoothed out the wrinkled cover carefully, patted it down and stood up. Clearly there was more going on between the two resurrected geniuses than a squabble over him but he didn't have a hope of figuring out everything. What was important, right now, was that the SAS unit had taken Gerber and gone and Mycroft no doubt with them. If Sherlock had stayed - if Mycroft had let his brother stay - then he might, if John was lucky, be seeking to renegotiate his deal with Jim to obtain John's release. He might be successful. The price might not be cripplingly high. That was three too many "mights" for John's liking. After three years on his own and today's revelations he no longer trusted absolutely in either Sherlock's intentions or his competence. He needed to get out of here on his own. 

The door was solid wood, the lock and hinges substantial and on the wrong side. Breaking it down would take time and make noise, and even if there wasn't a guard outside it Jim's penthouse suite was directly above this room. There had been some sort of ledge under the window, seen in the brief glimpse than he'd managed downwards, but John didn’t do heights any more, not after Sherlock’s fall. He couldn't even look towards the frame without feeling the sweat starting to bead on his face. Nothing else. A small, windowless bathroom, the bed, the furniture, the door with Moriarty's people behind it. And the window. 

Maybe Sherlock would save him, somehow. Maybe (a new thought) Jim mainly wanted a captive medic. With that injury he must have complex medical needs. John could play doctor, if he had to, and wait for a more opportune moment to get free. A moment at ground level. 

He sniffed at himself. Wishful thinking. Jim had covered him with explosives. Jim had injected Sherlock with paralytics and had him beaten up while helpless. Jim's plans for him were undoubtedly far more unpleasant. 

By the time they came back for him he'd bruised his shoulder repeatedly but the door hinges were holding solid. The window was still firmly closed. 

* * * *

You haven't gone home with your brother. You haven't come back to me either. You walk rapidly, cooled takeaway coffee in one hand, around the Central Botanic Gardens, not looking at any of the exotic plants, oblivious to the passers-by. It's just somewhere to walk. Somewhere to think. It doesn't matter how much you pace and you think, Sherlock. I've got you trapped. 

The answer - the only answer - is obvious, my genius lover. Stop being so bloody sentimental. Would it really make any difference to you if I killed him? You weren't planning on ever seeing him again and he's made a mess of his life anyway. Same with the others. Stop caring. Let them die. Then you might have a chance. 

Otherwise when I'm tired of you I'll use them to make you jump again and this time I'll make sure you'll hit the ground hard. But first I'll get my answers. Why did I try to kill myself? What could we possibly have said? 

I am bored, watching you walk in circles. I call for the other one to be brought up. I will make you learn, Sherlock, that you don't delay in coming back to me. Not without consequences. 

***

Left alone for too long. Bad sign. He knows where I am, what I'm doing, but permits me solitude for hours. To return at a time of my choosing. Not like Jim. 

I expected him to wait for me, for obvious reasons, but what if he didn't? What if it's started? 

Text. _Am I missing anything?_

Two minutes silence, then 

_No rush. Pet and I are keeping ourselves entertained without you._

Bad. Drop cup and start towards exit. _On my way_

John will be essentially unharmed. Moriarty's leverage. He won't waste it. I tell myself again that he won't. Phone shrills again as I exit taxi. 

_Look up_

Don't look up. Don't look up. He needs an audience. If I don’t look up he won’t do anything. Push through lobby doors instead and run like hell for the lift.


	18. Chapter 18

You don't look at me.

Oh, much better than that, you don't register my presence at all. Six feet away from you in plain sight and you might as well be alone in the room. You and the thing on the floor. 

I have never seen you like this, caught, transfixed, frozen, helpless. Unaware of anything else; the colour of the carpet, the sounds of the city below. Me. 

The tableau doesn't last; one second, two, three and you've dragged yourself up out of the quicksand of terror-filled eyes just as John regains enough of himself to recognise you. As you lurch forward, desperately inelegant, he flinches back, a hand up to keep you apart. Keep your distance from him, Sherlock. You've had three long years' practice; how hard can it be?

-What did you do?

The question is for me, though you never look away from him. It's a stupid question. I've made you stupid. What a delightful achievement. You can see the open window, the way the man on the floor cowers pathetically away from it. By the time the second syllable leaves your lips you know.

We did this together, Sherlock, but you had the greater part in it. I merely had him dangled out of the window a hundred feet above the pavement. You made him fear falling.

-John. 

So soft. So unsure. He gets shakily up onto his feet,. You take another step towards him.

-Don't!

He wants to move backwards but the window's behind him so he just raises his hands again in a feeble simulacrum of self defence. If you go closer maybe he'll fall. That would be funny. One long long scream and splat!

You don't come closer, but you do hold out a hand. 

-John. Come away from the window. 

Devil and the deep blue sea. You are newly risen from Hell and at his back is the Mariana Trench. Poor dear John. You still think you can help him. Stupid. He just looks at you and then, a slow head turn, at me, and then at my people, armed and silent. 

\- What do you want, Sherlock? 

You pause as if you don't want to tell either of us. Then,

\- I want you to be safe.

He stares as if you're insane. I laugh, because that really is quite amusing in the circumstances. 

\- I wish you'd stayed dead. 

John's voice is flat and cold. You can have no doubt that he means it.

-This wasn't meant to happen, obviously. Moriarty...

You trail off, a whine of protest in your voice. It's all my fault now, is it? I do like my efforts acknowledged, admittedly, but really, Sherlock, this screw up is definitely of your making. I remind you aloud. 

-You jumped, Sherlock.

-Yes. You did.

John is my unlikely ally in this, but it's me that you turn on. 

\- You're nothing but a failed suicide, Jim. You lost control a long time ago. 

\- 'Jim' , is it, now?

John is hissing at you.

\- You and 'Jim'. Manipulation and deceit. There's nothing to choose between you any more. 

This is wonderful. I could watch it for hours. He hates you, Sherlock. You lied to him, traumatised him, abandoned him for years and then you gave him to me to play with. He can't imagine why you did it. Won't imagine.

John Watson's a lost cause to the Sherlock fan club for the moment and you know it. You step away, giving him room. Instead you loom above my chair, grim and desperate. My men prickle but they know better than to move without orders.

\- Let him go. 

You're not talking about this room. You want him free of me altogether. Tough.

\- We had a deal, remember? All of them. 

You follow my speech easily this time. I'm only saying what you expect to hear, after all.

-There was no deal. You shot yourself instead. You just don't remember doing it.

I shake my head. You're lying to me, Sherlock. I switch to the keyboard and the harsh monotone of the speaker.

\- We had a deal. Why else would you jump? But you cheated so you forfeit the game. He's mine. They are all mine.

-There was no deal . 

Your voice is as flat as John's. I am almost certain that you're lying. Almost. I hate the treacherous gap in my memory. John's picking up nothing but that word 'deal', over and over. He's shuffling unobtrusively around the room with his back to the wall, away from the window, towards us. 

That raises an interesting question. Can you and your pet take out my two men? Probably. They have guns but also orders not to kill either of you. There are plenty more waiting outside. If you killed me, you'd die. John would die. 

I could be your hostage. That sounds much more fun. Where would you take me, Sherlock? Not that scruffy hotel room of yours? We could find somewhere with a really big bed, decent room service and plenty of champagne. You'd have to get rid of the hanger on, though. Neither of us want him here and yet I'm not allowed to have him thrown out of the window. It hardly seems fair. 

I'm not going to let either of you have your brief heroics. Accidents happen in scuffles with guns attached. At my gesture the guards leave the room, the door shutting firmly behind them. Now it's just you and me and him. Your move, darling. All your moves.

*********  
Click. Door. 

John's breathing labours harsh. Endocrine system flushes adrenaline everywhere. Brain function fast inaccurate. He's been set up to make bad decisions.

Watch John.

Electronics hum. Dangerous crippled spider. Deadly enough. Can't fight way out of here. Too high up to escape (John's vertigo). Need Jim's cooperation, coerced/voluntary. 

John moves. Intercept. Struggle. Army fit/strong/adrenaline-fueled. Can't hold him without damage. Must hold him therefore damage required. He writhes on floor, swearing. 

"I regret the need for that. " Because he sometimes responds better to vernacular. "I'm sorry. "

"Sorry? You cold bastard! Let me at him! "

"Not here and now."

Jim laughs. I am not amused. 

"He comes with us."

Sharp object. Bottle against wall. 

"No my best hampahn!" Theatrics. Ignore. 

Wrap heavy glass shard in handkerchief. Sever cables under right wheelchair arm. Keypad dead. Communication with lackeys prevented. 

Cut length flex from standard lamp. Toss to John (recovering). Jim dragged from chair falls face down, unmoving on the wet carpet. 

"You need to carry him out of here holding the sharp edge at his throat. Tie him up in whatever fashion works best for that. " Well within John's skill set.

Well outside Jim's comfort level. Stiff muscles promise murder. Too late for that right now. John- the doctor - pulls flex far too tight- severe pain, impeded circulation. That window requires response in kind. Don't interfere. 

***

Jim Moriarty is slung over John's shoulder in a backwards fireman's lift, his face motionless against John's stomach, the shard of glass tight against his outstretched neck. The flex cutting deep into his wrists and ankles might well be superfluous as well as agonisingly painful but John is taking no chances. Just because Moriarty sits in a wheelchair doesn't make him helpless.

His shoulder hurts where Sherlock dug stiff fingers into the nerve a few minutes ago, stopping him from finishing this the only sensible way. Sherlock hasn't offered to help him with the considerable dead weight and John wouldn't let him anyway. He doesn't trust this reincarnation an inch. There was a deal between Sherlock and Moriarty that involved him, that he was never party to. That's enough. That and Sherlock's jump. He can't imagine what trusting Sherlock might feel like any more. 

Moriarty had his henchman hold John by one ankle out of the window, a hundred feet up. The horror of that hasn't gone away. He could have been dropped by accident, so easily. That's how little his life is worth. As they stride through the corridors past glowering minions he remembers utter terror and his hand presses down a little bit harder, starting a slim trickle of blood that runs down the man's neck and into his short black beard.

"Be a little more careful. " Sherlock says.

Fuck you, Sherlock. You and your boyfriend both. John moves the shard a fraction sideways, and the trickle widens.

John doesn't know where they go next. His army colleagues, if you can call Mycroft's puppets that, have gone. He can hardly carry a bleeding brain-damaged man across Kiev without garnering attention.

Into the lift, and Sherlock grabs the shard, slices deftly through the flexes. "We're all drunk," he advises John. "We'll take him between us. When we get into the cab, don't leave your prints on anything. His don't matter."

Moriarty hangs between them in a good enough simulation of drunkeness, Sherlock's hand on the back of his head keeping his face towards the floor, limbs flailing weakly. If he speaks it will be slurred and no-one will pay him any attention. 

They cross the lobby floor, loud and cheerful, find a taxi, bundle the apparently paralytically drunken man inside. Sherlock speaks to the the driver in a mixture of drink addled American English and pidgin Russian, waving a wad of US dollars and the taxi driver nods and puts his foot down, weaving through the streets even more recklessly then taxi drivers normally do and presumably losing their pursuers in the process. Miraculously they don't hit anything. 

John is in the back with Jim Moriarty and nothing to kill him with. He suspects that isn't accidental. He drags the body face down across his lap to keep the man quiet and the driver grumbles in Russian or possibly Ukrainian, doubtless worried about his upholstery. Sherlock waves the money again and he hushes. 

John doesn't speak: he doesn't know what Sherlock had told the driver and his own attempt at an American accent is atrocious. He has plenty of questions though - where are they going, what will they do with Moriarty?

The car leaves the city centre, maneuvuring onto a long freeway that John thinks from the signs must take them to the airport. After ten minutes or so Sherlock looks back at the two on the back seat. "Jesus. Ed's going to be sick." he declares, seemingly finding the idea hilarious.

"Not in cab! " the driver insists.

" Stop then. Stop here! We'll get out! "

" Here? " Despite his concern for his back seats the driver seems dubious about jettisoning his fares in what looks like the middle of nowhere.

" We'll call our friends." Sherlock repeats it in Russian, waving his phone. The taxi pulls over and they pull Moriarty free of it. Sherlock pays the driver then comes to help John. He glances around as the cab pulls away.

" Into the trees, quickly. "

They are on the edge of sparse woodland. They stumble by the light of Sherlock's mobile phone thirty feet or so into the darkness before Sherlock drops the side of Moriarty that he had been supporting. 

" Leave him here. "

" Why are we leaving him alive?"

"Better not to make it a police matter. Dog walkers use these woods. They'll sniff a body out in no time."

John glances around. It's summer and not cold by Ukrainian standards, but still chilly enough for hypothermia to set in if a man were to lie motionless out here all night.

"He might die anyway."

Sherlock shrugs. "Unlikely. Even if he did, his deficits won't show up on a standard post mortem. It will look like misadventure. Alcohol and exposure. Not a murder enquiry. If you were careful in the cab they won't identify him or us."

"Shouldn't he have some alcohol in his blood for that?"

"He's got some. The discrepancy in amounts will be overlooked in the light of the other evidence. Anyway, it's very unlikely to come to that. Jim Moriarty is a survivor. "

"Dohn, " Jim says. " Sherloh. Dohn. Yuh wih be sohr "

" No. " Sherlock tells him. " I won't. Goodbye Jim. "

He starts back towards the road. John casts a last look at the bundle of clothing in the dark. He's very much not sorry himself about what they are doing, except that Jim Moriarty is likely to survive it.

" Joh, " Moriarty slurs to him. " Lishe. "

"Not a chance," The memory of the high window is still raw and terrifying. He turns to follow Sherlock, paying no further attention to the noises coming from the darkness behind.


	19. Chapter 19

As the bus pulled away onto the empty highway the man standing on the roadside pulled out the left pocket phone and opened the text. 

A hand drawn, unlabeled map. He turned around a couple of times. That way. After half an hour's walking with his overnight bag getting ever heavier across his shoulder he reached a farm track indicated by a thick line on his map and hesitated. This must surely be the end of the journey that had taken him half way across the world following mysterious and increasingly annoying instructions from an anonymous source. Foolish to stop now, and yet the track looked strangely uninviting, even set as it was within autumnal green and gold farmlands. 

He was tired. Too old to travel across three continents for two and a half days without sleep. This wasn't like chasing a lead, it was being led by the nose and it was grinding him down. At least this might be the end of it. He shifted the bag higher and set off to follow the wheel tracks in the weed infested dry mud.

Half a mile from the main road, and well out of sight of it, he reached a new looking substantial security fence. A security code provided promptly by his right hand pocket phone got him past the gate, the sense of being watched only growing. 

The fence enclosed an ordinary farm, as far as he could tell. A small group of white faced red cattle tossed wide horns and matched him step for step on the other side of a stock fence as he walked towards the farmhouse, alert for dogs. There was some sort of corn, or maybe wheat- he didn't know the difference - tall in the fields and chickens scurried out of his way as he reached the yard. A couple of cats watched him from perches on bales of straw and farm machinery. 

"Hello?" he called. "Anyone home?" The cats turned tail and scampered into an open barn. The dog that rounded the side of the house was big, black and coming straight for him, snarling aggressively. He tensed, arm up to cover his neck, but a sharp whistle stopped it about ten feet away where it crouched, growling. 

The farmhouse door had opened. All he could see was the rifle butt, the man holding it dark in the shadow. He lifted his hands high in an automatic gesture. 

" You're on private land." The accent was unmistakably English. " Turn round and leave before I set the dog loose. "

He knew that voice... 

" John? John Watson?"

"Greg?" John sounded as startled as he felt. "What the hell are you doing here? Who else knows I'm here?" 

Lestrade shrugged. "Whoever sent me directions, I guess." He couldn't help noticing that John hadn't yet lowered the rifle. "I had no idea they'd lead to you. You were posted as killed in action in the summer." It had been yet another blow; he had become convinced in the years after Sherlock's death that they were all cursed somehow. 

"Could you have been followed? " John's tone was urgent. 

That Greg was certain about. "Twenty four hours and four passports ago I was in a Rio slum. Twelve hours before that, Zagreb. I've had six changes of phone and picked up god knows how many sets of cached papers. No-one could have traced the route I was sent. I don't know who set it up but they went to a lot of trouble and they were good. "

John nodded, lifted the rifle. "You'd better come in." He called to the dog who trotted off to a further distance, still eyeing Greg suspiciously. 

Greg noted that John didn't seem particularly curious about his mysterious travel agent. So Watson knew who had brought him here, then, even if he hadn't expected it. He was glad - very glad - to see John alive and presumably well but he was certain this wasn't a social call. He has no idea why either of them were here. 

"This is your farm? " He took a seat in the low beamed kitchen. 

John nodded. "I inherited it from a distant uncle. ,At least that's the local story. It explains why I haven't the foggiest idea what I'm doing." That was the first faint smile that Greg had seen. "There are a couple of good people around here ; they help when I ask and they leave me alone the rest of the time. My uncle was a bad tempered recluse, and they've decided its hereditary. I'm apparently easier to get on with than he was, anyway. Coffee? "

" Yes, thanks. So the real question - what are you doing living on a farm in Ontario?"

John looked uncomfortable. "It's under everyone's radar." he said vaguely. "How have things been with you?" 

Lestrade paused, wondering if he should stick to convention, but he'd come a long way to get here and he might as well be truthful. "About as bad as you can imagine. I'm on gardening leave and police bail, the terms of which incidentally I've broken by leaving the country. I'm waiting for a trial and disciplinary hearing that will almost certainly get me kicked out of the force for good even if I don't get a jail term.. They say I assaulted a suspect, and there are a dozen witnesses lined up to confirm it, but I can't find out who's orchestrating them. Then someone trashed my place, took everything saleable, set the rest alight, and the insurance company have no record that I renewed my cover so they won't pay out. I've got nothing - all my photos, personal stuff, all gone. My car got nicked and all the paperwork was in the flat, of course, so I've got another insurer refusing to pay out."

That was all the unimportant stuff. He took a breath. 

"Molly disappeared a month or so back - you know the hospital she was in? Well she isn't any more, and no-one seems to have a clue how she got out or where she might be. The was a sighting that might have been her by the river by they haven't found a body yet. That and your funeral; its been a hellish autumn. Felt like there was no-one and nothing left. Plenty of times I thought I might not bother carrying on." He'd followed the anonymous instructions only because he no longer had anything better to do. 

John nodded as if none of it surprised him. "He'll know about Molly, I hope. The rest- if it's any consolation you'd be dead by now if they weren't still playing games. I suppose suicide would be so much more satisfying than a sniper." 

"They, John? Who brought me here? "

" Sherlock, " John said matter of factly." Hadn't you worked that out?" 

He had, of course. Who else? He just hadn't let himself believe it until now. 

"Why?" Sherlock was alive. John was alive. He thought he knew where this was going and he felt sick. 

"Sherlock's not the only one who survived that rooftop. "

"Jim Moriarty. That's why you're out here?"

John nodded. "We had an encounter in Kiev in the summer. He's got something unpleasant going on with Sherlock and the rest of us are collateral damage. Worse than that, leverage. Sounds like he's been flexing his muscles with you." 

Moriarty alive and after him. Behind everything that had happened. Greg thought about that. It didn't make things any better. 

"Moriarty's changed, " John said. "So has Sherlock." He poured out the coffee.

"Does he live here too?" The place didn't have a Sherlock feel to it; it was more or less tidy and everything looked like it belonged. 

Join snorted. "No. I don't think he does living anywhere any more, and we... Well, we really don't get on any more." 

"But he set this up? The farm?"

John took a half empty whisky bottle off the shelf, added a hefty amount to his coffee and put the open bottle down next to Greg's hand. "While Moriarty's alive Sherlock thinks I'm his responsibility. There's nothing he hates more but it seems he's stuck with it. So he keeps me safe and keeps out of my way. That probably goes for you too, I guess, since you're here. " 

There was something very wrong here. Lestrade had seen the depths of John's grief after his friend's suicide. He'd have expected something a little less grim now. " But he's alive. That's good, surely."

John looked away from him, out off the window. The sunset was red gold. "When Moriarty thought he was dead he left the rest of us alone. Now..." he trailed off, clearly unwilling to finish the thought aloud. "Sherlock's changed. I told you. He doesn't want friends any more, or even people to show off to. He left us all behind when he jumped. If you meet him you'll see." 

"Will I meet him? "

John shook his head. "He doesn't tell me what he's up to. I don't even have an emergency contact. He turned up here briefly shortly after I moved in, to check up on everything, I suppose. That's the last I heard from him." His voice was flat and cold. Unhappy, undoubtedly, but who wouldn't be? Isolated in a foreign country, hunted by a madman and estranged from his best friend. Greg was tired and show on the uptake; it had only just dawned on him that Sherlock alive meant that he must have deliberately faked the jump. And kept John in the dark about it for years. Bastard. 

"So you're supposed to just stay here until Moriarty is caught? " He glanced around the kitchen. " Farming? "

" I imagine that's 'we' just stay here. Once he's got you off Moriarty's radar he won't want you going back onto it " 

" That's ludicrous. I can't live here! " Greg was a city man. A London man. He couldn't suddenly live among cows and... and things! He had a life - a pretty crap one right now, admittedly, but he couldn't just go into hiding indefinitely. And much as he liked John Watson he would rather not have his cohabitee chosen for him. 

"Stay a night or two until we hear from him, anyway. Spare room's up the stairs, first on the left. I'll do steak for dinner. One redeeming feature of being a cattle farmer; there's always steak in the freezer."


	20. Chapter 20

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The End

Lestrade will be there by now. They will swap stories, exclaim, curse me. He will stay a night, and then two, and then not leave. What has he to get back to?

In a few weeks I’ll send Molly to them, quiet and anxious but essentially functional. 

John will write a novel without any detectives in it. A minor publisher will take it up, but it won’t sell enough copies for a second contract. He’ll self publish after that, to a tiny but obsessively loyal following.

Lestrade will take up painting watercolours, with no talent but a great deal of determination. He’ll get a big motorbike and black leathers and wander around Canada on his own, always wary of the strangers he hooks up with, always drawn back to his friends. 

Molly will take over the farm. She’ll breed show winning Hereford cattle, talking to them softly, telling them all the things she won’t tell anyone else. She’ll lead the huge bull around the local showgrounds by a rope through the ring in his nose, utterly unafraid.

They will have each other. They will have a home. They will have money, already deposited, significantly more than the tiny farm could generate. They are hidden far beyond Jim’s capacity to find them, provided I don’t lead him to them. I won’t.

They’ll wonder when I’m going to get in touch. Eventually they’ll forget to wonder.

I’ve done everything for them that I can.

(Nearly everything.)

I’ve done everything for them that I am willing to do.

* * * * *

The wind is high, making the window frame whine in protest. It’s a March wind, cold and relentless. The man asleep on the bed twitches and whines his own involuntary complaint.

The noise from the window stops abruptly. Jim sleeps on a trigger hair these nights; he is awake. There’s a pressure pad alert on the headboard; all he has to do is touch it, no fine manipulation required. He waits. The shape of a tall head and shoulders in the window frame is silhouetted against the faint early morning light outside.

Jim keeps his hand near the pad as Sherlock contorts himself to get through the small opening then stands up, brushing his coat down and straightening his jacket.

“Goh mornn.”

It has been eight months or so since Jim was abandoned in a wood in Kiev. They have both been busy, though Jim has to concede that Sherlock has been more successful. He has lost track of three of their playing pieces and the fourth has ceased to be useful.

Still, Sherlock is here.

“Good morning. You won’t need that.” Sherlock nods towards the alarm, a barely seen gesture in the near darkness . “I’m not here to stop you this time.”

“No?” (Let us dispense with the phonetics. Sherlock understands him.) “You think I won’t find them.”

“Forget about them.” Sherlock flicks a standard lamp on, investigates the sideboard, retrieves a bottle of port, a decanter and a glass. “They are outside the game now. Done with the both of us.”

“You can’t keep them from me forever.”

“Keep them from you? No.” He fills the decanter, sits down on the chair by the bed, close enough to touch. “But unless I lead you to them you don’t have a trace to follow.”

“You’ll lead me to them.”

Sherlock slides his phone out from his pocket. “Take a look. This is all I have now and you won’t find them on here. No webcams, no bank account monitoring, nothing. No contact, now or in the future. Outside the game. It’s the reason why I don’t have to kill you.”

“And what about your brother?” Jim watches the dark liquid splashing into the glass from his less than ideal position flat on his back. 

“Oh, send Mycroft your very best sniper, if it will make you happy. You know you can’t control me that way.”

Sherlock has no-one left. Jim thinks about that while he shifts himself up the bed. No John Watson to keep him company. No Greg Lestrade to keep him honest. No Molly Hooper to keep him human. Has he given them up just to keep them alive?

Jim’s in arm’s reach and helpless. There’s an easier way to keep them safe. "Why," he asks, though he thinks that he may at last know the answer, "didn't you go back, after you thought I was dead?”

Sherlock turns the glass in his hand. He hasn’t tasted it yet. “Because I was still falling.” His smile has nothing pleasant in it. “Now it appears that I’ve finally hit the ground.”

Wonderful. Sherlock may have finally mastered metaphor. Jim chalks that up as an achievement of his own. God knows that the man’s consciousness would hardly have been expanded just hanging around the dullards. 

If Sherlock is in the mood for co-operating with questions, Jim still needs one answer from him.

“Tell me.”

The window is still open. The air in the room is chilly by now. The bedclothes have slipped off, as they usually do if he tries to move around without help. He sleeps swathed in a one piece garment of thick cotton, inelegant but it keeps draughts at bay. All these indignities, only one source. “Sherlock, pet,” he cajoles. “It’s time to tell me.”

There’s a bolt on the inside of the door. Sherlock slides it closed, paces back, glass in hand, to the end of the bed, where he looks down on Jim. A slow consideration, head to intermittently twitching toes.

“It will disappoint you.”

“I shot myself through the head, dearest boy. I don’t expect it to have been one of my finest moments.”

"Very well. We met on the roof. You told me about the snipers. You had to gloat, of course. That was your undoing. Nothing, you claimed, would stop them except my fall. "

He takes a sip at last from the glass, rolls the alcohol around his mouth, savouring it. 

"You wouldn't call them back, you said." 

Jim takes a sharp breath involuntarily. His mistake. All that time not knowing and it had been his mistake all along. 

"I'm sure you can deduce the rest. I told you that I could force you to recall them and I was apparently intimidating enough that you believed me. So you shot yourself to remove my one chance of escape. And then I escaped anyway, as I'd always intended, faking the fall. "

He smiles again at Jim. "All for nothing. Are you disappointed?" 

Sherlock has been nursing that story for a long time, Why is now the right time to tell it, Jim wonders. Of course he's disappointed, disappointed and furious. How could he have made not just one but two mistakes of that magnitude, after all his careful planning? Sherlock should have burned. He should be whole. 

"If it's any help, you didn't seem particularly enthusiastic about staying alive after you had done for me."

Jim remembers the thoughts, of frustration, of boredom, of having achieved all that's worth anything and having nothing left. He can't summon up a recollection of how that had felt any more. There's nothing like struggling to rebuild am empire using a voice that can't communicate, limbs that won't obey the simplest commands and bodily functions that fail regularly to make the ennui attached to being smarter that everyone else seem self indulgent nonsense. 

Foolish, careless, reckless. Had he really failed to recognise the possibility of survival, his or Sherlock's? 

It doesn't matter now. What matters is what always matters. What happens next. Sherlock has spilled his secrets at last, has hidden his hostages, is here but not for Jim's death. His own? Jim thinks not. 

"Where will you go now?"

Sherlock raises an eyebrow. "That depends. Where are you going?" 

There's a place in the Swiss Alps that Jim owns. It has everything he needs there. It's valuable to him so he's 's been staying away from it while Sherlock might be tracking him but he would be glad to get back there, keep his hands much tighter on the reins of his business in comfort and convenience. 

*Home," he tells Sherlock. "How would you like to come along? "

 

_He walks through the corridors of the villa at night, playing the ghost that he has become. The men and women who work here watch him pass but no one speaks to him and no-one blocks his path, even when he pushes the door open and steps out into the near blackness._

_There is a waxing half moon tonight, light cloud cover. It matters, here. In the cities that he's spent his life in the phase of the moon is an unimportant astronomical phenomenon. Here in his mountainous afterlife he always knows: gibbous or crescent, cloudy skies or clear, the time and the place that it rises and that it sets. He sleeps no better than he did in Baker Street but the long stretches of the night are different. Everything is different. Not better, not worse. Different._

_It is three am in Switzerland. 9pm in a small farm in Ontario. He pictures them in the farm kitchen doing all the things that he predicted; Lestrade struggling with half unfolded maps, planning his next trip, Molly filling in show entrance forms and animal movement records, John frowning at his laptop, trying to rearrange an awkward phrase. The black dog lies in front of the stove, asleep._

_This is not the truth. Life is more unpredictable than that. Whatever disasters and triumphs have befallen them, their falling outs and falling ins, sickness, accident, happenstance, mistakes- he will never know, not unless they are careless or stubborn enough to show themselves on Jim's radar. Not while Jim lives. Not after._

_Moriarty is asleep now, sated and satisfied. Sherlock can still feel the familiar sense memory of awkward hands grasping at his skin. He will shower later but he walks first, his feet crushing the pine needles under the uneven light of the cloud-distorted moon._

_He is not unhappy. He is not bored. He is not alone. If he misses anything it is only the noise of London, the glow of street lights throughout the night, the millions of people who come and go without ever knowing that all their secrets can be read from their clothes and their faces. He will go back to London soon, just to visit, will slide through the Underground and walk across the parks and no-one who matters will know that he is there. But he cannot stay there long because of the decisions he made. Because he fell._

_Sherlock Holmes, Consulting Detective of Baker Street is dead, tumbled off the roof of Barts with a confession made, a final murmured suicide note. From the moment he let John see him jump Sherlock Holmes was falling. It was just a long, long time to impact. If Jim had succeeded in putting that treacherous bullet somewhere lethal it would have made no difference. There is always another villain on the up, always more hostages to be taken. Moriarty had shown him that he can't have friends and the last few years have shown him that it's harder to be alone than he imagined._

_Sherlock's ghost turns back to the lighted villa, to the only company that he dares. He thinks that he would like that shower now. Then he may sleep for a couple of hours, then work on untangling a little more of Jim's Scandinavian network. It is a game they play, deliberate confusion and patient unravelling, interspersed with the planning of occasional, profitable atrocities that Sherlock can sometimes foil and sometimes merely has to witness. They play for lives but not the lives of anyone who matters. (How John would be appalled if he said that aloud.) Sherlock does his best to save them all anyway._

_All is, if not precisely well, then well enough under the circumstances. No-one will ever hold Jim Moriarty hostage for Sherlock's compliance. Everything else is in the end irrelevant. He glances one last time at the hazy moon, then passes back into the quiet building, heading not for the bed that he left a while before but for his own well appointed suite of rooms and the tempting thought of a long hot shower and then a brief oblivion._

 

FINIS


End file.
